The Orphanage (R) ***

By Rene Rodriguez

A cross between a Henry James-flavored ghost story and all-out horror chiller, The Orphanage (El orfanato) straddles the line between sophisticated thriller and scare machine with an uncommon grace. The feature film debut of Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona, based on a screenplay by Sergio G. Sanchez, hails from the same school as The Others and The Devil’s Backbone — movies about potentially undead spirits that take their time building their clammy thrills.

What distinguishes The Orphanage are some spare but fiendishly well-placed shocks that give the film an extra sense of danger: You can’t take comfort with this one assuming you know what lurks around each corner, because you don’t. Trust me.

The story centers on Laura (Belen Rueda), who along with her husband (Fernando Cayo) buys the orphanage where she spent part of her childhood in hopes of turning the now-abandoned facility into a home for sick children. But the somewhat spooky place has an unexpected effect on the couple’s 7-year-old son, Simon (Roger Princep), who develops an entire clique of imaginary friends.

Then a sinister social worker (Montserrat Carulla) pays a visit and Simon inadvertently discovers two things: One, he’s adopted, and two, he has a terminal illness. By this point, The Orphanage has become utterly absorbing in the effortless way of a fairy tale, because Bayona has built the kind of ominous, shivery atmosphere that hints at dark events to come, but the story still has not revealed its ultimate direction — or where, exactly, that darkness will emanate from.

Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) was an executive producer on The Orphanage (and is apparently going to serve as producer of the English-language remake), which might help explain why the movie is so good at using its horror elements to explore deeper, less fantastical emotions. For all its bump-in-the-night suspense, The Orphanage is ultimately as much about motherhood and grief as it is about apparitions and shadowy corridors where bad things may be lurking, waiting to pounce.

This story was originally published January 10, 2008 at 5:01 AM.