01
The Others
Why this pick
Like The Orphanage, it turns a grand, isolated house into a space of maternal fear, childhood unease, and carefully sustained supernatural ambiguity.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE2007 1h 45m ESP
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
The Orphanage
DramaHorrorThriller
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved The Orphanage, try these.
01
02
The Devil's Backbone
Why this pick
A Spanish ghost story where an orphanage’s history and vulnerable children give the haunting the same mournful, compassionate weight as The Orphanage.
03
The Innocents
Why this pick
Its elegant, unnerving approach to a country estate and possibly haunted children rewards the same patience for suggestion, dread, and emotional uncertainty.
04
A Tale of Two Sisters
Why this pick
This exquisitely controlled family ghost story shares The Orphanage’s sorrowful atmosphere, child-centered menace, and gradual unspooling of buried trauma.
05
The Changeling
Why this pick
A grieving parent, a cavernous old home, and a mystery embedded in its walls create a restrained, melancholy supernatural investigation rather than a shock-driven scarefest.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
In 1975 Spain, a young girl named Laura is adopted. Years later, adult Laura returns to the closed orphanage, accompanied by her husband, Carlos, and their seven-year-old son, Simón. She plans to reopen the orphanage as a facility for disabled children. Simón claims to have befriended a boy named Tomás, and draws pictures of him as a child wearing a sack mask. Social worker Benigna Escobedo visits the house to inquire after Simón, and the audience learn that Laura and Carlos adopted Simón and that he is HIV-positive people. Incensed at Benigna's intrusion, Laura asks her to leave. Later that night Laura finds Benigna in the orphanage's coal shed, but Benigna flees the scene. Later, Simón teaches Laura a game which grants its winner a wish. Clues lead the two to Simón's adoption file. Simón becomes angry, and says that his new friend told him that Laura is not his biological mother and that he is going to die soon.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Fernando Cayo
Carlos
Óscar Casas
Tomás
Belén Rueda
Laura
Andrés Gertrúdix
Enrique
Édgar Vivar
Balaban
Geraldine Chaplin
Aurora