Hitchcock explained the difference between surprise and suspense like this: 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. Well, There’s a bomb under The Orphanage for excruciating stretches of time.
A couple buys a former orphanage to set up a children’s home. Things start to unravel when their son goes missing, so far so predictable. But this film achieves something unusual its an intelligent ghost story and psychological thriller for audiences with adult attention spans. Bayona delivers genuine tension without cheap tricks of schlock horror or gore. He evokes a wonderful sense of time and place in the contemporary world and 30 years earlier. Yet, what sets The Orphanage apart is the quality of the acting. Fernando Cayo creates a sympathetic character as the long-suffering husband, Montserrat Carulla gives us a terrifically creepy social worker and Geraldine Chapman is marvellous in a cameo as a psychic. But its Belen Rueda’s truly moving performance as a woman with a purpose, in the end facing her fears (and hopes) alone, that carries the film.
The film has been likened to The Others, and the credit sequence reminds us that Guillermo Del Toro is the producer. These comparisons and influences do not detract from The Orphanages power and individuality, and the stature of the director. Its counter-intuitive to describe a ghost story as beautiful, but this one is.
The Orphanage is a disturbing, and yet intelligent and compassionate dramatisation of loss and bereavement in some ways, it is a wish-fulfilment fantasy, a way of following the departed into the void so that they can be made to live again, and that the intolerable enigma of their death can be solved. Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian.
The Orphanage stands as one of the most beautiful and moving horror movies in recent memory. Jamie Russel, BBC Movies Review.
Bayona and his screenwriter (the frighteningly talented Sergio G. Sanchez) have a wealth of influences here, mostly from the classic ghost story side of the horror film vault, not to mention the glossy, crackling darkness of del Toro’s work and they are deployed to maximum effect. Chris Bassanti, Filmcritic.com