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Guillermo del Toro served as executive producer on this chilling and accomplished first feature by Juan Antonio Bayona. The film reflects many of the superstar Mexican director’s key preoccupations: the dream-life of children, strong but broken female characters and, most importantly, the modernisation of gothic horror.


Like del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (and The Others, directed by Bayona’s Spanish compatriot Alejandro Amenábar), The Orphanage plays with Victorian ideas of fantasy and moral punishment, while stitching in contemporary concerns: child abuse, feminist guilt and the impact of surveillance technology.

But Bayona is very much his own artist; he is more interested than del Toro in playing within the rules of genre expectation, but delights in making postmodern-ish references to cinema’s love affair with classy scares.
The story concerns the goings-on at an abandoned orphanage that saw some evildoings during the Franco regime. One of the former residents, Laura (Belén Rueda), returns to the abandoned estate with her husband and sensitive son. But the youngster quickly begins seeing – and then playing with – a group of malicious children, who may or may not be in his imagination...


Please note: Contains strong psychological horror and disturbing injury detail

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