The Orphanage

I thought it looked dumb at first, but Ben was insistent on seeing it. Produced by the same director of "Pan's Labrynth," Guillermo del Toro, the "El Orfanato" is also in Spanish. Knowing this, my expectations for the film were raised slightly, but I was still a little apprehensive about seeing a movie about a supposedly haunted orphanage filled with the ghosts of tortured disabled children. Despite my initial thoughts, the movie was suspenseful, chilling, and tragic...and really really good. Here's the synopsis:

"The Orphanage centers on a Laura (Belén Rueda) who purchases her beloved childhood orphanage with dreams of restoring and reopening the long abandoned facility as a place for disabled children. Once there, Laura discovers that the new environment awakens her sons imagination, but the ongoing fantasy games he plays with an invisible friend quickly turn into something more disturbing. Upon seeing her family increasingly threatened by the strange occurrences in the house, Laura looks to a group of parapsychologists for help in unraveling the mystery that has taken over the place."

See it.