This week The Orphanage, directed by J.A. Bayona and presented by Guillermo del Toro, arrives on Region 1 DVD. It's a creepy film that drips with atmosphere and is perfect for watching in a dark living room with no one around to reassure you that nothing lurks in the shadows of your mind.

I saw the movie at the local multiplex, on the edge of my seat like the rest of the audience. But there was one major distraction from my viewing pleasure.

It was flu season and I happened to be sitting near a guy who coughed, hacked and sneezed throughout the ENTIRE FILM. A message for sick people who want to go to the movies: DON'T. Wait for the DVD.



Here's my review, which originally appeared in a different form in the Charleston City Paper.

FILM REVIEW: The Orphanage

The Spooky Art: Mexican ghost story gets the formula just right

BY NICK SMITH

Starring Belen Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Príncep

Directed by J.A. Bayona

Rated R (with English subtitles)

The Orphanage creeps onto DVD with an endorsement from Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro, but it doesn't really need one. It's an effective, desperately unsettling ghost story that shows Hollywood how a horror movie should be done.

Above all, The Orphanage proves that it doesn't take a whole load of CGI or a histrionic music score to create an atmosphere of psychological terror. Less is more.

Simon (Roger Príncep) is a cute 7-year-old boy with an even cuter mom (Laura, played by Belen Rueda). Simon, Laura, and her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) move into an old dark house that used to be Laura's orphanage when she was a girl. Now it's creaky, foreboding, and beset by thunderstorms. As is customary, things go bump in the night.

Simon is adopted, and he gets lonely while he waits for his parents to reopen the orphanage and bring in some new kids with special needs. Like a lot of bored, friendless sprogs, Simon invents some imaginary chums — or are they the ghosts of past orphans?

The movie revolves around Rueda's performance as she goes from loving mother to tortured soul when her son goes missing at the orphanage's re-opening party.

Is a mysterious, hatchet-wielding old lady responsible? Is it the specter of Tomas, a deformed little boy who was shut away in the house? Or is Laura going loopy?

Rueda's excellent. She evokes the weariness of a put-upon parent and a whiff of psychosis without losing the sympathy of the audience.

Cayo is equally believable as Carlos, the family pragmatist. When Laura invites a medium into the house, Carlos refuses to acknowledge the eerie voices of the children they hear. He's the down-to-earth type whose reasoning fails to track down Simon. Laura's only choice is to take the medium's advice and go beyond reason, exploring the ethereal instead.

So far, so derivative — there are shades of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, Poltergeist, and del Toro's own orphanage-set ghost tale, The Devil's Backbone. There's also a nice homage to 1963's The Haunting when something crawls into bed beside Laura ­— and it ain't her husband.

Fortunately, this film doesn't just rehash its predecessors to deliver its frights. It adds new twists, it's beautifully shot, and it's told with an obvious love for the genre that's obviously lacking in standard U.S. examples. There's only one dump-in-your-drawers shock in the movie. The rest is a subtle exercise in tension and utter creepiness.

This kind of film only works if the audience cares about the main characters. It's a credit to the actors and first-time director Juan Antonio Bayona that the distraught parents' plight is always engrossing.

One particularly effective scene takes place outside the orphanage, in a meeting for bereaved moms and dads who've glimpsed their children long after death. The supporting cast and the look of the film build a sense of realism that makes the supernatural elements easier to swallow.

By tapping into our too-real fears of losing a loved one, The Orphanage becomes more than a series of frights. It can be charming and poignant as well. Although there are subtitles, these rarely distract from the flow of a film that relies on rich visuals to propel its narrative.
Its flaws lie in its attempts to compete with Hollywood: The music is occasionally overblown, there's a clichéd underwater dream sequence, and the use of a deformed child as a way to perturb the audience isn't exactly PC.

But these minor missteps never detract from the film's scary, emotionally gripping atmosphere, making it required viewing for mainstream horror directors and discerning film fans alike.

A Review of "The Orphanage"

I've seen a lot of movies in my time, and a fair few of those have been scary ones.

But it's rare to see a film that's so dreadfully creepy that it makes you want to watch with a hand across your eyes, peering out between your fingers. You know, the kind where you wish the dreadful atmosphere would let up... yet you're enjoying it at the same time.

The Orphanage (co-produced by Guillermo del Toro) is a film like that, and you can read a review of it here. Suffice to say it's a cool movie.