With a very well-constructed script and remarkable performances, The Orphanage impacts and maintains tension throughout making it clear that the ghosts in Spain come from within... [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 1, 2024

Bayona approaches his story with patience and dread, reminding us why suspense relies on what we don’t see, the possibility, as opposed to immediately pulling the curtain back on blood and gore.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 21, 2024

A deeply absorbing and heavily atmospheric yarn that offers several noteworthy plot spins.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 8, 2021

Easily the greatest ghost movie of the 21st century so far.

| Nov 2, 2021

A skillfully made heartbreaker.

| Oct 20, 2021

It's only March but you're unlikely to see a better ghost story at the cinema this year than The Orphanage.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 4, 2018

El Orfanato is as haunting and it is haunted. Somehow the horror movie clichés ( a medium, a seance, night vision, the subverting of childhood games into something sinister) come across as natural instead of contrived.

| Aug 24, 2018

... an intelligent combination of small details, coincidences and scenes of chilling realism. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 19, 2018

Bayona never resorts to gore and prefers an approach based on the carefully built up suspense found in classic Hitchcock films; and much like Hitchcock, the story is based on a very viable Freudian premise.

| Feb 29, 2016

The less you know of this film, the more you'll be surprised, shocked and, in the end, satisfied.

| Oct 14, 2014

There are no monsters, or slashers, and yet the movie got under my skin so much so that it left me shaky as I walked out of the theater.

| Original Score: A- | Oct 14, 2014

Though The Orphanage sticks fairly closely to a genre fomat, and the plot twists become a little predictable, the film packs surprises all the way to the end.

| Oct 14, 2014

Let the anticipation of Bayona's next move begin.

| Oct 14, 2014

By the time we reach the third act, this is less a horror film but a psychological study of a protagonist on the brink of emotional collapse.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 14, 2014

A frightening movie that earns its scares the hard way, generating unbearable tension through artful technique instead of computer.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2013

Spanish director JA Bayona's debut feature is an exceptionally effective and surprisingly moving ghost story that seasons its horror with a pervasive sense of grief.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 7, 2013

The horror genre is not often known for its subtlety, but The Orphanage proves that sometimes it's more satisfying to squirm in your seat than it is to jump out of it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 14, 2012

This Guillermo del Toro-produced Spanish spook-'em-up re-opens the door to the chilly, bracing air of the old-school ghost story.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 10, 2012

As director Juan Antonio Bayona proves with his astonishing feature debut, you don't need a rusty scalpel to reveal the inner workings of the human heart.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 6, 2010

This is a movie whose power and emotional pitch lie in the understated: the discreet performances, the lack of special effects, the laconic script.

| Jul 6, 2010