The Orphanage

Impressions before seeing it
I was having a foreign movie night with friends and we rented this Spanish film produced by Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro. I'm not familiar with the rest of his work (as of today I've never seen Hellboy), but Pan's Labyrinth was a great movie.

How was it?
The Orphanage is a creepy horror mystery in the style of films like The Sixth Sense, The Others, and Hide and Seek, and I have to say off the bat that I'm not really a fan of that genre (although The Sixth Sense is a brilliant movie if you have the good fortune to see it before having the ending spoiled for you). I also want to point out that, while those three films have plot twist endings, this one doesn't, or at least not one that blows your mind.

So basically this review is going to be biased, because after doing some quick browsing it appears that most people love The Orphanage. I did not. I can't say that it was a bad movie, because clearly it was well thought out and the cinematography has the appropriate dark and creepy vibe, but not overly so. But I have to use the word "creepy" in reference to the film's intent rather than its nature, because I didn't really find it spooky or disturbing. I don't even watch a lot of horror movies, but after seeing so many of the trailers over the years, I almost feel desensitized to a lot of it, because most of those movies just rely on frightening images (like, say, the kid in this movie who wears the weird burlap mask) rather than frightening stories. The Orphanage has a house full of ghost children, but I didn't really get a sense of danger from the situation. Not even when the aforementioned masked kid locked our heroine in the bathroom. And horror is supposed to be scary, right? To be honest I found it a little slow, and the time I spent cracking jokes about it with my friends was more entertaining than the movie itself and its underwhelming climax.

Recommendation
I don't know what kind of person would enjoy this movie. Even if you get really into it, it's sort of morbid and dark, and probably not as good as the three other films I mentioned. A good surprise ending might have made it worthwhile. But I suppose if you scare easily (really easily) and/or want to wallow in your own depression, then you might be interested. I wasn't, but a lot of that is probably due to my general distaste for horror.