Orphanage (2007)

"A great horror movie is like a good shrink...It purges us through petrification. That horror movie, thankfully, has arrived.  David Ansen, Newsweek
"Lures us in with extraordinary subtlety...it builds its suspense almost subliminally.  Desson Thomson, The Washington Post
"A fastidiously grim ghost story that rattles the bones of the haunted-house genre and finds plenty of fresh (but not too bloody) meat.  Justin Chang, Variety
"By the end, you'll be chilled and disturbed by what you've seen -- and, rare as this is in a horror movie, touched to the heart.  Lawrence Toppman, Charlotte Observer
"The acting is uniformly superb, the camera work and set design are haunting...  Lou Lumenick, New York Post
"Reaches truly terrifying heights...Like "Pan's Labyrinth," this is a movie about children made very much for adults.  Marc Mohan, Portland Oregonian
"Delivers more goose bumps than anything Hollywood has served up in years...  Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

Editor's Note It might come as no surprise that the producer of the Spanish supernatural thriller THE ORPHANAGE is none other than Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro (PAN'S LABYRINTH, THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE), for his influence is felt greatly throughout the picture. Made by an entire crew of newcomers--director Juan Antonio Bayona, screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez, director of photography Oscar Faura, composer Fernando Velazquez--THE ORPHANAGE is an extremely accomplished work. The story concerns Laura (Belen Rueda), who has returned with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and adopted child Simon (Roger Princep) to the large manor where she was raised in an orphanage as a child. Laura is determined to fix up the abandoned house and open it as a refuge for ill children. But from the moment she returns, the past begins to haunt her. It isn't long before she begins to see the children who she used to play with as a seven-year-old. And when Simon goes missing one afternoon, she's convinced that they have taken him hostage. What follows is a murky descent into Laura's mind, where she doesn't know what is real and what is a figment of her tortured imagination. Bayona brings Sanchez's complex script to life with the help of Faura's haunting imagery and Valazquez's atmospheric score. But what makes THE ORPHANAGE an even greater achievement is its insistence on being more than just a superficial scare-fest. Bayona and Sanchez are more interested in deeper themes of memory, loss, and grief, establishing Laura as a mother who feels guilt over not being able to protect her child from outside forces. The result is a film that is both unsettling and moving.

	Belen Rueda
	Fernando Cayo
	Mabel Rivera
	Roger Princep
	Elena Ruiz - Editor
	Fernando Velazquez - Original Music By
	Guillermo del Toro, et. al. - Producer
	Inigo Navarro - Art Director
	J.A. Bayona - Director
	Josep Rosell - Production Designer
	Oscar Faura - Cinematographer
	Sergio G. Sanchez - Writer

Box Office
"THE ORPHANAGE is an effectively scary picture about guilt, retribution and acceptance, and it shares some of the spectral potency of Alejandro Amenabar's THE OTHERS." 01/01/2008 p.48-49

Los Angeles Times
"In just a few minutes, Juan Antonio Bayona sets the tone of his eerie, atmospheric first feature....An unexpectedly poignant ghost story..." 12/28/2007

Rolling Stone
3 stars out of 4 -- "A frightening movie that earns its scares the hard way, generating unbearable tension through artful technique instead of computer." 01/24/2008 p.71

Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "An unsettling yet refreshing thriller...it generates deep feeling while implicating you in its terrors and traumas..." 05/01/2008 p.36

Empire
4 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he story is riveted together by Belen Rueda's performance, a turn constantly on the brink of emotional collapse....The climax is an emotional wallop." 04/01/2008 p.54

Sight and Sound
"This is a movie whose power and emotional pitch lie in the understated....A poignant film that looks to the past and the world beyond to illuminate the realities of the present." 04/01/2008 p.44-45

Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "THE ORPHANAGE -- produced by Del Toro -- delivers....The moments of horror are effective..." 05/01/2008 p.124

ReelViews 8 of 10
The Orphanage is an effective mixture of horror and fantasy, with the supernatural bleeding into dreams that teeter on the brink of reality. It employs a similar, although not identical, approach to the one that marked 2006's late-year success, Pan's Labyrinth. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, the director of Pan's Labyrinth, has lent his support to The Orphanage, allowing the opening credits and poster art to state "Presented by Guillermo del Toro." So his shadow looms large over the film and one can acknowledge that director J.A. Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez have learned well from him as they proceed down this unusual path...The Orphanage is not as good as Pan's Labyrinth. The set design fails to achieve the same level of inventiveness, the screenplay is less tight, and the secondary characters are not as compelling. However, for those who enjoy ghost stories and are willing to be patient with a movie that gradually unveils its secrets rather than uncovering them all in an orgy of violence and terror, The Orphanage fills a need. The spell it casts early does not evaporate until the epilogue is finished. - James Berardinelli

Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
Now here is an excellent example of why it is more frightening to await something than to experience it. "The Orphanage" has every opportunity to descend into routine shock and horror, or even into the pits with the slasher pictures, but it only pulls the trigger a couple of times. The rest is all waiting, anticipating, dreading...Hitchcock was very wise about this. In his book-length conversation with Truffaut, he used a famous example to explain the difference between surprise and suspense. If people are seated at a table and a bomb explodes, that is surprise. If they are seated at a table, and you know there's a bomb under the table attached to a ticking clock, but they continue to play cards -- that's suspense. There's a bomb under "The Orphanage" for excruciating stretches of time...That makes the film into a superior ghost story, if indeed there are ghosts in it. I am not sure: They may instead be the experience or illusion of ghosts in the mind of the heroine...The film, a Spanish production directed by Juan Antonio Bayona and produced by Guillermo del Toro ("The Devil's Backbone," "Pan's Labyrinth"), is deliberately aimed at viewers with developed attention spans. It lingers to create atmosphere, a sense of place, a sympathy with the characters, instead of rushing into cheap thrills. - Roger Ebert