The Orphanage is a Spanish horror movie from the year 2007.

In the leading role is Belen Rueda (Laura) who lives in the old house with her husband Carlos and son Simon. The house used to be an orphanage and Laura spent her childhood there until she was adopted. Laura’s son is also adopted but he doesn’t know it at the beginning of the movie. He is the only child in the family and that’s why he has a lot of imaginary friends.  Laura is a bit worried about Simon because of these friends: Simon says that his friend told him that Laura and Carlos aren’t his real parents. Simon is HIV positive and because of that he must take medicines every day.

When Laura was a child there wasn’t a lot of children in the orphanage -only six, including Laura. And now, Laura is going to open the orphanage again and take there only a few child. But when Simon disappears the plans about opening the orphanage again are cancelled. After Simon’s disappearance Laura starts to see these Simon’s imaginary friends and soon she realizes that they are the children who lived in the orphanage with her when she was a child. There is only one strange thing: these children haven’t grown up at all. And in a really complicated ways these children try to help Laura to find Simon.

Casting of the film is very successful, though first it was a bit weird to see Rueda in a movie like this because she is probably best known from the Spanish series ”Los Serranos”. This movie is a horror movie and there is a lot of scary scenes (of course music has a big part in this: without it the scenes wouldn’t be so horrible) but it isn’t really that traumatic, like some other movies in this genre.