The Orphanage (2007) 8/10

Starring : Belen Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Princep, Mabel Rivera
Director : Jaun Antonio Bayona
Running Time : 102 mins

Laura (Rueda) buys her childhood orphanage and moves her family in to live in the hope of reopening it as a home for children with special needs, but her own son Simon (Princep) starts acting strangely and spends more and more time with his invisible friends. When Simon goes missing, Laura decides to call in a team of parapsychologists as she believes the home may be haunted and that the ghosts might be responsible for her son’s disappearance.

This was a good, yet strangely disturbing movie. The overall conclusion is so downbeat it beggars belief, yet Bayona directs it in such a way as to make it as uplifting as possible. Though in many ways this is similar to both The Devil’s Backbone and Poltergeist, this is still a very strong stand alone movie which is well worth going to see.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Devil’s Backbone