After the surprise success of Pan’s Labyrinth last year, Picturehouse took a chance by floating this creepy Spanish ghost story to mainstream U.S. audiences. It’s worth a
look. The first section is paced so slowly that it’s almost
sleep-inducing, with a cute kid mugging for the camera in every other
scene. After the young boy abruptly disappears-kidnapped, perhaps, by
the invisible friends he has found in the former orphanage owned by his
adoptive parents?-the film slowly comes to life. Director Juan Antonio
Bayona takes a mostly restrained approach, opting to create atmosphere
instead of manufacturing thrills. He does stage a single scene of
grisly violence at about the halfway mark that’s startling enough to
keep audiences on edge for the duration, as mother Laura (Belén Rueda
in a tense, wiry performance), becomes more and more consumed with the
search for her vanished son. Haunted-house tropes and other genre
clichés abound, but The Orphanage is actually refreshing, in part
because it avoids the kind of self-conscious twist endings popularized
by recent horror movies. In some ways it’s a very old-fashioned piece
of entertainment-it’s not particularly gory, but it’s spooky, scary and
satisfying. B A version of this review was originally published in the White Plains Times.