Chilling ghost story produced by Guillermo del Toro. Laura (Belen Rueda) has fond memories of the orphanage she grew up in. She was well cared for by the staff and she loved her fellow orphans like they were her own flesh and blood. Thirty years later, accompanied by her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and her 7-year-old son Simon (Roger Princep), she returns to her childhood home with a dream of restoring the now abandoned orphanage and reopening it as a home for disabled youngsters. However, it's not long before Simon starts communicating with an invisible new friend and telling strange stories. Carlos is skeptical of his son, believing that he is just seeking attention. Then Simon disappears without trace...
It seems just lately that rarely a week passes between the release of the latest horror movie destined to revive the fortunes of a flagging genre. So far this year we’... more >
It seems just lately that rarely a week passes between the release of the latest horror movie destined to revive the fortunes of a flagging genre. So far this year we’ve had 30 Days of Night, Cloverfield, Funny Games, Diary of the Dead, [REC] and The Eye to name but a half dozen (and that’s without mentioning the half dozen at least still to come). More unusual is the horror film that genuinely lives up to the hype. The Orphanage – written by Sergio Sánchez, directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and produced by Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth fame – is one such film. Like Del Toro’s own The Devil’s Backbone, The Orphanage is deceptive. Anyone expecting crude jump cuts, CGI fakery and blood and guts galore may want to look elsewhere. This is a chiller masterclass, in the vein of Don’t Look Now and The Innocents.
The film revolves primarily around Laura (Belén Rueda, perhaps best known previously as Julia in Alejandro Amenábar’s excellent 2004 movie, The Sea Within, opposite Javier Bardem), who we first see moving into the eponymous orphanage in the company of her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their adopted nine-year-old son, Simón (Roger Príncep). Laura, an orphan herself who once called the orphanage home, at first dismisses Simón’s friendships with imaginary children as harmless, even in the face of a creepy hide-and-go-seek treasure hunt. Laura and Carlos plan to adopt more children and, in a party scene that harks back to the likes of Von Trier’s The Kingdom, young Simón goes missing and The Orphanage truly comes into a world of its own.
Brilliantly realising that most contemporary of fears (that, in the wake of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance for example, not-knowing is arguably worse than death), The Orphanage works like a tuning fork on your nerves, with images and full scenes humming in your head for weeks afterwards. There are creepy old ladies with bottle-bottom glasses, night vision séances (Geraldine Chaplin in scene-stealing form), grotesque Hitchcock-esque jumps and jolts and genuinely hair-raising psychological chills.
If this doesn’t revive critical respect for the horror genre, nothing will. < less
Visually stunning and surprisingly ambitious, this is both a beautifully structured ghost story and a character study of a woman driven to extremes. Performances matc... more >
Visually stunning and surprisingly ambitious, this is both a beautifully structured ghost story and a character study of a woman driven to extremes. Performances match the stylish direction. < less
