Decent minded young mother Laura (Rueda) returns to the orphanage where she grew up with the intention of converting it into a home for handicapped children, including her own HIV positive son, Roger. In a house where every floorboard and strip of wallpaper suggests sinister intent Roger soon finds fun with mischievous, unseen companions. It would not, at this junction, take a genre veteran to realise the child’s new chums will turn nasty. Sure enough, on the very day the facility is scheduled to open, Roger disappears. Months pass as Laura grieves inconsolably though she remains convinced that her child might be recovered if she can determine what the ghosts are trying to tell her.
It’s a good omen that the debut feature from music promo wunderkind Juan Antonio Bayona immediately makes you think of The Shining and The Turn Of The Screw. The film also visibly shares DNA with Guillermo Del Toro’s Earlier, Creepier Ones Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone. (Unsurprisingly, the Pan’s Labyrinth director is the movie’s producer.)
Despite these apparent overlaps, The Orphanage is very much its own thing. Certain details may sound familiar but Bayona executes every bump in the night as if armed with some new fangled six-blade razor. His is an old school spookhouse, a virtually bloodless, entirely psychological, updated Victorian trip. To sit through it is to experience two-hours of dread, goosebumps and starts. If we lived in the ’50s its unholy union of madness, bereavement and ghosts would surely carry some sort of bogus med-vertisement health warning.
As the tension mounts, you’ll give absolutely anything to look away but The Orphanage simply won’t let you. Discombobulating thought, no?