Stark and Fantastical Horror from Spain

Rating: 9/10 (5 September 2010)

As a young girl Laura lived at an orphanage with a handful of other kids only to come back to that orphanage years later as a new owner and desiring to provide comfort and a place of being for some new kids. But Laura, along with her doctor husband and their seven year old adopted son Simon soon discover the orphanage has some dark secrets within. That is, in a proverbial nutshell, the basic premise behind this film, and director Juan Antonio Bayona and producer Guillermo del Toro take that basic premise and weave a haunting, fantastical, beautifully filmed vision to the screen that is at moments breathtaking to the eye and chest-grabbing to the heart. Eeerie images abound, strange noises can be overheard throughout as Laura soon loses her son Simon to the secrets within and must find some way to fill the void of Simon's absence. We get a paranormal investigation, ghostly games, and a hideous secret that has been figuratively(and literally) buried in the orphanage for years. This film has more style than many other films in its genre and is for all purposes one of the best and most stylish horror films I have seen made within the last ten or fifteen years. You can definitely see del Toro's hands involved. The acting by a primarily Spanish cast is first-rate with beautiful Belen Rueda as Laura giving a fine compassionate and chilling performance as Laura - a woman obsessed with finding her lost son at all costs. Geraldine Chaplin, speaking Spanish in a "perfecto" manner has a nice small role as a medium. Every time I see her I see her father's doleful eyes and that beautifully simple face. The real star of this film; however, it the director's artistic vision. The film shows virtually no blood or bloodletting, yet it delivers scare after scare with sights and sounds. The mask of the child and the doll are just two of those sights which conjure a myriad of emotions. The Orphange is not a straight and traditional horror film as you will discover by film's end, but it packs a wallop of a punch and has quite a bite in it. It is thankfully subtitled and not dubbed. I forgot after ten minutes or so the film was in a foreign language(to me it is foreign at least)and was mesmerized with what was on screen. If you have never tried a foreign subtitled film, this one might be a good introduction to you.