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The Orphanage (2007)

Director: J.A. Bayona

Time Out rating

Average user rating

29 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

An extraordinary performance by Belén Rueda (‘The Sea Inside’) is the beating heart and tortured soul of ‘The Orphanage’, the most frightening ghost story since ‘The Others’. But where Alejandro Amenábar’s supernatural puzzle-piece was chilly and cerebral, fellow Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona’s affecting debut feature is unashamedly melodramatic.

Heeding producer Guillermo del Toro’s maxim that all the best ghost stories possess an element of melancholy, it offers an emotionally overwrought, disturbingly adult view of childhood fears.
Together with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and adopted seven-year-old son Simón (Roger Príncep), Laura (Rueda) is celebrating the opening of their new home for mentally and physically handicapped children.

But when Simón vanishes into thin air, stories he has told about his ‘imaginary friends’ start to chime with troubling recollections from Laura’s own childhood – as an orphan raised in this very same house. Do these disturbing, deeply buried memories hold clues to Simón’s mysterious disappearance, or are they merely a symptom of Laura’s regressive slide into an infantile state? Drawing upon children’s games and the Wendy/Lost Boys thread of ‘Peter Pan’, scriptwriter Sergio G Sánchez explores the mental disintegration of a woman possessed and overwhelmed by her child’s disappearance.

Much influenced by Roman Polanski, Bayona displays a forensic eye for the creepy, unsettling atmosphere that wreathes itself around the domestic settings and everyday objects. With its elegant, atmospheric long takes and expressionistic use of colour, ‘The Orphanage’ draws us inexorably into its haunted physical and mental spaces. The seance conducted by Geraldine Chaplin’s bird-like psychic, Aurora, is a bravura set piece charged with terror and distressing emotion, the finale subtle but heart-breaking.

Author: Nigel Floyd 2008-03-18 11:54:03

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

hols and becki said...

Posted on Jan 24 2009 16:53 we watched this movie six months ago, and have watched it about 10 times now and learn something new every time. it's an amazing film, but it leaves unanswered questions which we are still thinking about now. we've watched:
shrooms
the amytiville horror
all five saw films
the sixth sense
wolf creek
texas chainsaw massacre
the mist
28 weeks later
30 days of night
halloween
the hills have eyes 1/2
the exorcist
and lots more. we are only 15 but the orphange is one of our favoutires and the only one that kept us on the edge of our seats. it's far better than 'the others' and the acting is great. people who say this is a rubbish movie obviously can't handle a mind twisting film. also, this film has helped us with our gcse spanish. une, dos, tres toco la pare!! haha. we recommend it (es laura!) 10/10. love from holsy and bexy :) xxxx

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Selena said...

Posted on Jan 19 2009 22:08 Great acting indeed, absorbing, good suspense atmosphere. The scary children ghosts maybe not that original, but generally well done!

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Aug 07 2008 02:11 Spooky with several moments that make you jump as in any haunted house ghost
story, yet also an intelligent thriller with a well prepared backstory. Although the
medium uses semi-scientific methods to look for proof of dead people, yet she
declares ‘Believing is seeing’. We are in a realm where to see ghosts is dependent
upon one’s belief system as in Hamlet where suppressed Catholicism brings with it concomitant spirits. Admirably free from special effects CGI we have one creaky
old mansion, an invisible lighthouse and shadowy caves. We also have the child, Simon, adopted by Laura who herself was adopted after living in the Orphanage
she is now buying with her husband, Carlos. They are going to run a modern orphanage for disabled children . However the real subject of the film is childhood,
it’s vulnerability and fantasy states, and also death and the beyond. The sense of loss, grief and motherly love are also very important. Buen Rueda as Laura gives such
an overwhelming performance she carries the film. Simon has 5 imaginary friends
who are also probably the children Laura left behind when she was adopted but
they were all killed. Simon gets Laura to learn some games that lead to finding clues
into his friends’ other world. However he goes missing and she undergoes a kind of regression as if she is Wendy looking for the lost children in Peter Pan. Through make-belief , rituals and childhood games she transforms herself into a receptacle
of the supernatural. She has succumbed like Simon and been led away as in Yeat’s
poem’ The Stolen Child’ through fairyland into death. The ending is not quite as
satisfying as one would have liked but it is ambiguous. Two endings would have been
better. This film seems to remember ‘The Innocents’ and ‘The Others’.

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jimbo said...

Posted on Apr 28 2008 17:57 don't generally watch this sort of film but the fulsome reviews tempted me. wasn't worried by it or convinced. by its silliness, it reminds me why i don't trouble myself with this sort of thing.

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sparks said...

Posted on Apr 28 2008 12:07 Really good film! original and creepy, definately worth a watch.

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on Apr 21 2008 15:22 an absolute instant classic in line with the shining -a real revelation

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on Apr 21 2008 15:20 beyond the horror and above the buoyant is the best way to describe this blessed offerring from spain .
bayona is a major new talent and it is written all over this instant classic which is a psychological melodrama above the overwrought sensibilities of some overclever but obnoxious critics who are becoming clownish in their critiques comparing it to others and sixth sense -just because it has a supernatural element with kids involved -that is where the similarity ends ,and child abuse and maternal love take over the empty stage from others
the movie is not inspired but more so derived out of maternal fear ,an overwrought emotion which all men who have any intelligence will comprehend ,and the matron here is real ,she has lines on her beatiful countenance ,which mortal matrons get when anxiety takes a toll ,unlike hollywood actresses like kidman or leigh ,who have regular botox injections which exceed the talent nature infused into their insipid forms ,but the emotion of fear is a primordial and powerful derivative which can make and destroy and here that comes in the form of a child vanishing in an orfanato,which is a metaphor for the world today where millions of kids disappear every year into various forms of slavery or violent death.
the mother here is superb ,but so is geraldine chaplin as a clairvoyant ,they balance each other well and the movie reminds us of the subconcious nuances of SHINING and DARK WATER,it is totally unlike the miserable and predictable OTHERS ,and any similarities are limited to it being termed a horror genre .
in truth this is about the fears of a mother and a parent and any sensitive person can identify with that premise ,and you dont have to have offspring to appreciate the trauma ,which is truly overwrought and affectively presented to the credit of a major talent on cinema horizon -bayona .
love it or hate it but you will not ignore it and it will haunt you and that is the power of true art ,and that is something OTHERS can never achieve in this life or the next .
- jbz7879

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john paul said...

Posted on Apr 20 2008 18:11 the film is garbage subtitles destroy it, if only it was in english also the acting is abit shabby all in all pooooooooo!

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Jessica said...

Posted on Apr 18 2008 03:05 Full of suspense, we spent the last 20 mins actually holding hands, which I've not had to do since Seven! Brilliant though I saw it weeks ago now & it's still with me.

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wolf72 said...

Posted on Apr 12 2008 23:59 This film is extraordinarily brilliant!! You completey forget the subtitles and just get absorbed into the whole atmosphere of the film. A very clever and strangely haunting movie. Don't go expecting a classic horror because it itsn't that kind of film, if you want suspense and that creepy kind of 'play on your mind' psychological stuff then go see it! A true classic and my film of the year for 08 so far!

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alan said...

Posted on Apr 10 2008 13:38 I have to say when they told me at the box office it was sub, I did look for Alt film. After I watched it I would say it really was great and easy to follow. Rather scary too, I'm 20 and I had my hands over my ears for Christ sake. Watch it you'll love it

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kez said...

Posted on Apr 10 2008 09:04 A good evening's entertainment. You don't notice the subtitles after a while. Recommended.

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Sutton said...

Posted on Apr 07 2008 13:32 A superb movie that keeps you gripped through out. Great performances from the leads and well shot. Well worth seeing on the big screen.

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christian martin said...

Posted on Apr 07 2008 12:49 A creepy film, well made, well thought and clever from the biginning to the end, another sample of good spanish cinema.

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Common Sense said...

Posted on Apr 06 2008 16:39 I haven't even seen this film yet, but if its anything like Pans Lab it will be awesome, the director is v well known. I cant believe there are people saying this film is rubbish because it has subtitles!!! Clearly, this film is not a hollywood slasher. Its for sensible people that want to see a good film.

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