J.A. Bayona's The Orphanage was roundly praised when it was released in 2007. I found it well-crafted, but dull. Sergio Sanchez's script situates the film in the sick house genre which includes The Fall of the House of Usher, The Shining, and many others. A medium (Geraldine Chaplin) baldly states the film's credo that structures carry traces of past trauma. The protagonist, Laura (Belen Rueda), spent some of her youth at the orphanage and, in a fit of misplaced nostalgia, wants to turn the shuttered building into a home for the disabled. She and her husband are parents to an HIV+ adoptee named Milo who has a penchant for acquiring imaginary friends in a film is overladen with significance, Of course, the ghostly inhabitants of the house start communicating with Milo who disappears, leading to Laura discovering the abode's deadly secrets.
The cast is fine and the visual, sound and production design are so expert that it is not surprising that Hollywood came calling for Mr. Bayona soon after. However, the script is derivative, not only of the above films, but also The Haunting, The Innocents, and the work of The Orphanage's producer, Guillermo del Toro. Also, like The Haunting and The Innocents, two horror classics I'm not crazy nuts about, The Orphanage is overly tasteful and reserved. There is very little sense of palpable horror even when the scarecrow boy attacks and bodies are uncovered. A suitable horror film when one is entertaining an elderly Aunt Sadie and Uncle Mort on Halloween, then.
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