The Orphanage

The Orphanage is an elegant, tightly-wound Spanish horror from first-time director Bayona, well-schooled in the ghostly atmospherics of producer Guillermo del Toro. Building a real sense of simmering menace from its opening scene, it constructs an intricate puzzle of guilt, grief and maternal longing in its employment of the familiar genre tropes of big house, spooky kids and suggested madness. Rueda is terrific as the bereaved mother who slowly comes to believe that supernatural forces have been at work in her son's disappearance, her quiet desperation adding a pervasive sense of melancholy to the eerie chills. But while one startlingly unexpected gory scene delivers a welcome jolt part-way through, the film struggles to keep its momentum, muddling its sense of unease with too many gliding shots down dim hallways and shuddering strings on the soundtrack. There are some memorably well-executed moments, particularly a genuinely tense sequence with the delicately gaunt Chaplin wandering through the labyrinthine house in a trance, shot in flickering, night-vision greens. But Bayona is so indebted to his influences (The Innocents, The Others, The Devil's Backbone) that the end result is a suspenseful yet very familiar ghost story that ultimately attempts one too many turns of the screw. [Laura Smith]