5. The Orphanage
Original Title: El Orfanato Another film from the Guillermo del Toro Presents... school of sophisticated scariness, The Orphanage is Julia's Eyes star Belen Rueda's finest hour. Here Rueda plays Laura, an orphan returning as an adult to the abandoned orphanage where she was raised, seeking to turn it into a home for disabled children along with her own adopted son Simon. When Simon develops an imaginary friendship with a boy in a sack mask and disappears shortly afterwards, things start to get really creepy. Already a success in Spain thanks to her acclaimed and award winning role in The Sea Inside, Rueda here, as in Julia's Eyes, is at the heart of every moment on screen. She excels as a woman cracking up, unsure of the truth of what she's seeing as she tries to find out what happened to her child and instead discovers the orphanage's dark secret. Director J.A. Bayona manages to provide Rueda with plenty of scares whether the suggestive slow burning creep of summoning ghosts through a children's game or the sudden shock of a woman run down by a car just before we get some answers. It all builds to a climax that's both tragically heartbreaking and strangely cathartic. Made for a budget of around $4 million, The Orphanage went on to earn almost $80 million at the box office, allowing Bayona to make one of the biggest Spanish films of all time: $45 million tsunami disaster picture The Impossible (Lo Imposible). Bayona is currently working with Skyfall and American Beauty's Sam Mendes on Gothic TV series Penny Dreadful.
See this if you liked: A mix of subtle ghostly scares, lonely, isolated children and tragic maternal guilt, The Orphanage is perfect for anyone who found The Others one of the most expert and chilling ghost stories in years, while its sympathetic yet scary child ghosts recall producer del Toro's The Devil's Backbone. The Spanish obviously have a knack for this kind of thing.