The Orphanage

The Orphanage

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona (R)

A woman’s return to an orphanage stirs up ghosts of her past.

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Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez have created an eerie, elegantly wrought haunted-house story for their first feature film, said Desson Thomson in The Washington Post. But the only ghosts in The Orphanage are those we create ourselves. Produced and clearly inspired by Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth fame, The Orphanage intertwines the real with the supernatural. A woman returns with her husband and son to the orphanage where she was raised, in hopes of turning the dilapidated building into an institution for special-needs children. When her son disappears, she becomes convinced that ghosts of her past have captured her 7-year-old. Bayona and Sanchez “bring a dimension of reality to this otherworldly situation,” offering a believable but truly terrifying glimpse into the other side. The Orphanage echoes some of producer del Toro’s familiar themes but falls short, said Bill White in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Bayona relies on literary and film associations, hinting at everything from Peter Pan to The Shining, instead of inventing a “cinematic universe of his own.” Though woven from familiar narrative threads, The Orphanage is a “genuinely haunting tale,” said Moira Macdonald in The Seattle Times. Bayona avoids excessive gore and cheap jolts, instead revealing the “fear that quiet can bring.” The film “gets under your skin” and remains with you.