|
The Orpanage Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona Fairy Tales have a dark side. I remember my mother reading my brothers and from brothers Grimm, and remarking, “What IS this?” and put the book away forever. About ten years ago, apparently, Sergio G. Sanchez was thinking about the fairy tale known as Peter Pan, and came up with one hell of a ghost story. Laur (Belen Rueda) lived in an orphanage for a while before being adopted. The experience was one she never forgot and when we meet her for the second time, she's returning as an adult with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their young son, Simon (Roger Princep). Laura and Carlos are going to refurbish the place and turn it into a center for disabled youngsters. Simon isn't actually disabled himself, not physically at least, but he's got an obsession with an imaginary friend, which is something ordinary for a kid his age. What isn't is that soon he's got a whole bunch of them and they can do things outside his brain. Then one day a very creepy social worker (Montserrat Carulla) shows up inquiring about Simon and who his real parents were, something our protagonists have been keeping a secret from their son. The lady informs the kid and bad things start to happen.
Simon attacks Laura during a party and disappears. Much of the film
deals with the search, the identity of the Social Worker and the
paranormal happenings that are taking place, which leads to a
confrontation between a police psychologist (Mabel Ribera) and a
medium named Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin), who claims to have
discovered a gaggle of ghosts and a covered up murder many years
before. There is very little blood, but the scare factor is high.
Go to Index Archives of past reviews
|