The Orphanage

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.

Leave a Reply