It’s an artsy haunted house thriller with subtitles about a missing little boy who has AIDS called “The Orphanage.” Ugh. Nothing like starting the new movie year off on a cheery note!
But as one of those character-driven and sincerely emotional versions of a genre film, which the Europeans often do better than us, this visit to a home of parentless Spanish ghost children isn’t quite as grueling as you’d expect.
That’s due largely to the heartfelt leading performance of Belen Rueda as the earnest Laura, a former orphan who returns as an adult to the old seaside institution of her youth. Accompanied by her physician husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their secretly ill and secretly adopted 7-year-old son Simon (Roger Princep), her plan is to renovate the now vaguely creepy place into a sanctuary for differently-abled kids.
But events don’t go as planned when Simon’s tendency to invent imaginary friends may have turned into something real. Or has it? With a strong streak of horror fantasy implied, “The Orphanage” posits that the unsettled spirits of some children from Laura’s early days there may have something to do with Simon’s sudden disappearance.
The movie tries to have it both ways. It cops out to some extent, however, dabbling in magical realism and manipulative fright tricks while also hoping to keep the narrative grounded in some kind of internal logic and plausibility. Unlike 2007’s more absorbing “Gone Baby Gone,” a missing-child piece which had a larger array of complicated characters as well as a more detailed milieu to explore, this smaller-scale supernatural mystery by screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez requires a lot more suspension of disbelief.
It may also require Prozac, especially for parents. Indeed, the actors do create great sympathy for their characters’ desperate plights, and director Juan Antonio Bayona uses the camera to full dramatic effect. But today’s eerie deconstruction of a grieving mother’s mind wallows in the downbeat without much of a larger point.
‘The Orphanage’
***
» Starring: Belen Rueda, Fernando Cayo
» Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
» Rated R for some disturbing content
» Running time: 105 minutes
» In Spanish with English subtitles
