The Orphanage

THE ORPHANAGE (EL ORFANATO)

A Spanish-language film from 2007, The Orphanage is a ghost story that traces the journey of Laura, a woman who returns to the orphanage where she lived for part of her childhood.  Laura and her husband (who have an adopted seven-year-old son named Simon) intend to re-open the facility as a home for special-needs children.  Simon chats with imaginary friends and even invites home a new one that he “meets” on the beach.  After Simon vanishes without a trace, Laura grows to believe that the orphanage may be haunted and that the ghosts have knowledge of Simon’s whereabouts.  Laura sets out to make contact with the spirits as she desperately searches for her missing son, who is HIV-positive and requires daily medication.

I wanted to like The Orphanage more than I actually did.  I don’t mind films with “down” endings, and The Orphanage does become quite sad in its closing scenes, but the journey to the finale has to be entertaining.  The Orphanage elicits a couple of good scares along the way (one of which seems like a variation on the “whose hand was I holding” scene in the 1963 version of The Haunting) but never fully gripped me and got under my skin the way some haunted house films do (such as The Others from 2001).  The aspect of a child going missing in the context of ghostly happenings seems derivative of 1982’s Poltergeist.  I’m always on the lookout for a good haunted house movie, but The Orphanage disappointed me.