Scheduled for a U.S. opening in December, Juan Antonio Bayona’s elegant ghost story EL ORFANATO has already been generating a great deal of positive – and some negative -  word of mouth responses from its many festival showings at Cannes, Toronto, Sitges, Austin and New York. I had the opportunity to see the film recently during a visit to Girona, Spain where it was playing at a multiplex just a few blocks away from the wonderful Museu del Cinema which houses the Tomas Mallol collection (visit the web site for more information about this amazing repository devoted to the beginnings and earlier origins of the medium known as the cinema – http://www.museudelcinema.org/).

Produced by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), EL ORFANATO definitely shares similarities with some of Del Toro’s work, especially “The Devil’s Backbone”, in its depiction of children robbed of their innocence and subjected to soul crushing inhumanities. There are also homages and references to other great supernatural thrillers from the films of Val Lewton to “The Innocents” to the more recent “The Others” and even the short stories of M.R. James (“Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come to You, My Lad,” “Casting the Runes”).

The film, however, has a distinct personality of its own, despite some criticisms of it being too derivative and sedate to work as an effective chiller. I see the film more as a tragedy with elements of the supernatural but there are still some spine-tingling moments amid the immense sadness of the story. It all takes place in a beautiful old mansion on a sprawling estate near the ocean which has just been purchased by a couple, Laura (Belen Rueda) and Carlos (Fernando Cavo) with an adopted child Simon (Roger Princep). Their plan is to turn it into a home for handicapped children and for Laura, who was also adopted, the place has a sentimental attachment – it was the orphanage where she spent some of the happiest days of her childhood.

The story takes a dark turn almost as soon as Laura and her family move in starting with the unexpected arrival of Benigna (Montserrat Carulla), a suspicious-looking character with coke-bottle glasses who delivers a dossier with some disturbing information on their son. Meanwhile, Simon retreats into a fantasy life with his imaginary playmates Watson and Pepe which causes some concern for Laura. Her anxiety increases when he meets a new “playmate” named Tomas in a cave on the beach and leaves a trail of seashells so Tomas can follow him home. It gets creepier from here on and I won’t reveal any more except to say that the chain of events which occur compell Laura to uncover the terrible secret of the house and to try to exorcise the evil that has taken hold of the place. The film ends on a note of redemption and salvation but is far from a happy one and in its own way is just as dark and despairing as that of “The Descent.”

On a visual level, EL ORFANATO is stunning and much of the film’s mood and atmosphere is due to Oscar Faura’s cinematography which was also the highlight of several similar genre exercises: “Los Sin Nombre,” (1999) aka The Nameless, “Intacto” (2001), “The Abandoned” (2006). But the burden of the film falls on Belen Rueda (“The Sea Inside”) who is really the central focus and not Simon. Her gradual transition from apprehension to terror to a final death-defying course of action is beautifully sustained and absorbing.

As a director,  Juan Antonio Bayona has only made one previous theatrical feature (“El Hombre Esponja”) and dabbled in music videos but EL ORFANATO bodes well for a promising future. It’s refreshing to see restraint and subtlety in a contemporary ghost story when CGI overkill, excessive gore, and MTV-style editing seems the norm. Some of the most chilling moments in EL ORFANATO employ no special effects at all. There’s a sequence with a medium (Geraldine Chaplin in a cameo appearance) and a team of poltergeist experts that is truly unsettling but we never really “see” anything. Even a kids’ game of “knock on wood” takes on a more ominious tone here. And there is a children’s party sequence that seems inspired by Diane Arbus’s final photographs of Down Syndrome children in Halloween masks. The scene that raised the hair on my neck though was the scene where Laura is in bed and is awakened by her husband getting under the covers with her and snuggling….except that it isn’t her husband.

Look for EL ORFANATO to open in most major cities on December 28th from Picturehouse Entertainment. Here is the official web site – http://www.theorphanagemovie.com/