THE producer is Guillermo Del Toro and the film bears the hallmarks of the award-winning director of Pan's Labyrinth with its unsettling images, flashes of fantasy and shocking denouement.
Director J A Bayona does a disturbing job of staging a series of jolts, shocks and terrifying apparitions as this ghost story unfolds.
Laura (Belen Rueda) buys the orphanage where she spent her happy childhood years.
Thirty years later, she returns to the long-abandoned building with her husband (Fernando Cayo) and seven-year-old son Simon (Roger Princep) with dreams of restoring the building and opening a home for disabled children.
But where she once played happily, Simon imagines he sees odd things and alarms his mother with his tale-telling.
His stories awaken something in her, raising doubts about what really happened growing up at the orphanage.
Without resorting to crude shocks or splatter effects, Bayona piles on the tension to almost unbearable levels.
You know something horrible is lurking in the dark corners of the house, each scene adding to the suspense and setting the nerves jangling.
Stars: Belen Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Roger Princep, Geraldine Chaplin
Running time: 106 mins
Rating: Four stars
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