Interview. Juan Antonio Bayona and Sergio Sánchez.

"The Orphanage is a film that often makes something out of nothing - something being scaring the bejesus out of you. Director Juan Antonio Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G Sánchez ratchet up the tension to such excruciating heights that, while you're watching the film, your impulse is to scream out loud just to feel some sense of release," writes Mark Olsen in the LA Weekly.

At the main site, Michael Guillén talks with Bayona about his debut feature and with Sánchez about the screenplay everyone'd told him was "wrong, wrong," and with both about their producer, Guillermo del Toro, and their touchstones, ranging from Henry James to Steven Spielberg.

Updated through 1/1.

Back to Olsen in the LAW: "[T]here's not really a bogeyman in The Orphanage and not much blood; just insane intensity and a building sense of bad vibes. Staring into that face of inky blackness is actress Belén Rueda." He talks with her, while Ella Taylor interviews Bayona.

"Even though The Orphanage is Juan Antonio Bayona's first feature film, there is no doubting his skill," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "But like his patron Guillermo del Toro (who is both producer and 'presenter' of this movie), Mr Bayona is interested in using the horror genre to explore emotions beyond mere fright. Though there are plenty of sudden jolts and eerie atmospherics, The Orphanage is ultimately concerned with grief, remorse and maternal longing."

"If The Orphanage were boiled down to a few isolated moments of skillfully executed terror, Bayona would surely have crafted a masterpiece," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "Because its pace-heavy plot goes too many directions and fails to pick up all the pieces, the result is something less than that - but admirable nonetheless. Let the anticipation of Bayona's next move begin."

"The Orphanage gets steadily more engrossing - and scary, as Rueda's performance takes hold," writes Jim Ridley in the Voice. "Wandering the empty house in jittery despair, Rueda gives as gripping a screen solo as Will Smith in I Am Legend (the season's other ice-bath in the isolation of parental grief)."

"Although Bayona shows a surprisingly steady hand for a first-timer, his horror flick - neither incompetent (admittedly, I screamed out loud at one point) nor particularly imaginative in fulfilling its generic aims - simply doesn't leave much of an impression, no matter its artier, Cannes and New York Film Festival-anointed veneer," writes Kristi Mitsuda at indieWIRE.

"It's a bedtime story: if you let Bayona and Del Toro scare you, they'll reassure you that there's nothing to be scared of," writes Mark Asch in the L Magazine.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Bayona "about ghost stories, growing up on a diet of great movies, and the inherent appeal of Stephen King's Sugar in the Raw.

For the Los Angeles Times, Geoff Boucher talks with Bayona - and Sánchez, who tells him, "We've made a horror movie for grannies. Seriously, the film is difficult to describe to people. It's not a drama; it's not a horror film. But it is also both."

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes, Toronto and New York.

Updates: "There's a single gory scene in The Orphanage, and it's so fleeting and uncannily naturalistic - it happens in broad daylight on a crowded street - that you almost long to see it again just to confirm what you think you saw the first time," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "Bayona can distill more dread from a simple party scene with attendees wearing creepy face masks than the usual horror film can wrench from a chain saw."

"When I first saw The Orphanage, I found it an overly clinical genre exercise whose sentimental moments felt forced, but it will also plant roots in your subconscious and linger there for weeks," writes Salon's Andrew O'Hehir.

For Bruce Bennett, writing in the New York Sun, "the film almost feels like Spanish Scary Movie's Greatest Hits Volume One."

"The Orphanage's joys come from the experiential: Bayona's cultured technical skills, including some phenomenal sound design, and sustained anxiety," writes Aaron Hillis for Premiere. "It's about as healthy as junk food gets."

"[W]hile some of the trappings and even some of the plot elements could easily be called unoriginal, Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G Sánchez arrange them in a fresh way, crafting an emotionally resonant, nerve-jangling experience," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club.

"So lovely and lyrical is the film's opening shot - a group of small children playing a stop-and-go variant of tag, with the pursuers advancing a few menacing steps at a time - that few seem to have noticed that the remainder amounts to little more than the usual grab-bag of cheap shock effects and pro-forma eerieness, plus subtitles," writes Mike D'Angelo at Nerve.

"Agnosticism has killed the horror genre in the United States. Take away the afterlife, take away a belief in the spirit world, and horror becomes about nothing but the fear of death and stories about sadism," writes Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Add in those ingredients, and horror can return to its real subject - the line between the seen and unseen, where the living meet the dead and the mysteries of life are revealed. Until we figure that out, we may have to keep importing our horror, and if that means more movies like The Orphanage, all the better."

"Now here is an excellent example of why it is more frightening to await something than to experience it," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"It's been exactly a year since the release of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, the best movie of 2006," writes Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "Now, del Toro is back, this time as producer only, of this genuinely creepy ghost story - Spain's entry for the Foreign Language Oscar - which, if not the year's best, is certainly among the best."

Update, 12/30: "When the star of The Orphanage, Belén Rueda (The Sea Inside), said in a telephone interview that her film should be thought of as 'something that could happen in real life,' she meant losing one's way, losing one's child or losing one's mind: not the stuff of the everyday, perhaps, but far more plausible than blood-sucking ghouls, flesh-eating viruses or 'torture porn,' techniques that work on the nervous system the way a reflex hammer works on a kneecap," writes John Anderson in the NYT. "What Ms Rueda is talking about is a fear of the possible."

Update, 1/1: "It seems to be a rarer and rarer thing to actually watch a film that gives you the creeps (in a good way) and gets you to jump," writes Edward Copeland. "The Orphanage follows the basic template of horror stories, but first-time director Bayona still manages to build some surprises and suspense within the formula."

Posted by dwhudson at December 28, 2007 3:48 AM