A horror film made by the wonderful filmmakers who brought us Pan’s Labyrinth holds a great amount of promise. The Orphanage definitely lives up to its older brother’s reputation.

Nothing draws a crowd, and kicks off the spring/summer movie season, quite like a good ghost story. Especially one featuring creepy little kids in disturbing masks. Even for a Saturday night I was surprised at how full the theatre was when I went to see this film. I actually had to sit next to a stranger. Yuck. But I digress. The large crowd only added to my amusement when it was made clear that the film was in Spanish with English subtitles. Though made by Spanish film makers, as it has been marketed as The Orphanage rather than El Orfanato, many people were not expecting to have to read the dialogue. I was pleasantly surprised, however, by the lack of grumbling and the ensuing silence in the theatre as the audience sat attentively, raptly engaged in the film.

The story is that of Laura who buys the orphanage in which she grew up with the intention of setting up a group home for children with special needs. Together with her husband and young son Simon she soon gets wrapped up in a sad and chilling mystery involving a former employee of the orphanage, her deformed child who constantly wore a disturbing mask, and what happened to the other orphans after Laura had been adopted. Simon inexplicably disappears, and it is Laura’s desperate need to find her lost son which compels her to enlist the help of the dead.

Not unlike Pan’s Labyrinth, The Orphanage keeps the gore to a minimum, but what it does have is extremely realistic and hard to look at. The film makers did not shy away from the human form, even when it was broken and mutilated. Unlike the glossy horror films of the US, the dead bodies look dead rather than like pretty actors who are merely asleep. While The Orphanage did not actually scare me (that’s not a criticism – only two films in history have succeeded in that feat), it definitely has its creepy and uncomfortable moments. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and it seems the average Saturday night movie audience did as well as I overheard nothing but good things walking out of the theatre.

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