The Orphanage (15)

One of the many advantages of being a moviegoer is that it makes death so much more interesting. There you are, breathing your last, and it comes time to roll the final showreel. While others might be content with glimpses of holidays and parties flashing before their eyes, the film lover will always have Casablanca, the lobster scene from Annie Hall, or ET flying past on his bicycle.

There are some cinematic images you don't want to entertain at that point, of course. For me, it's a certain shot in Don't Look Now, Nicolas Roeg's tale of death in Venice. Even today, the sight of a small bod in a red dufflecoat brings me out in a rash.

Here to induce terror in a new generation is The Orphanage, Juan Antonio Bayona's superlative Spanish chiller. Though it provides its share of frights, the tale of a former orphan who returns to her old haunts is more than a ghost story. By exploring grief, longing, and the search for happy endings to unhappy childhoods, The Orphanage delivers intensely moving drama as well.

An English-language remake has already been announced, with Guillermo del Toro, the writer-director of the glorious Pan's Labyrinth and the producer of Bayona's movie, signed up to assist.

Laura (Belen Rueda) has journeyed back to the huge, rambling house in the country that was her home until she was adopted. Now the wife of a doctor, Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and mother to a young son, Simon (Roger Princep), Laura dreams of giving something back by turning the gloomy former institution into a happy, welcoming abode for her own family and a group of severely disabled children.

Simon settles in well at the new place, its many rooms and nearby beach offering exciting places to explore. A lonely only child, he's prone to having imaginary friends, so when he acquires a set of new ones his parents go along with the pretence as usual. It is soon apparent, though, that a worrying change is taking place in their son. Usually a placid, happy child, he's becoming withdrawn and aggressive. More worrying still, he is speaking about events and matters he should not, and could not, know about.

In the best Jamesian tradition, the screenplay by Sergio Sanchez then begins to turn the screw on Laura and her family. Whatever once lived in this house wants to make its presence felt again, and despite the protestations of her sceptical husband, Laura feels compelled to respond. She even resorts to calling in a medium, played by Geraldine Chaplin.

The scenes, shot in night vision, in which Chaplin is trying to make contact with the other side, are genuinely disturbing. They are not half as alarming, however, as the quieter sequences Bayona sets up. This is not a crash-bang-wallop kind of horror where bogeymen leap from cupboards or lurk behind sofas. Here, terror tiptoes quietly and is doubly chilling for it.

Sanchez and Bayona, both making their feature film debut, haven't managed to avoid some of the frightful clichés familiar to horror movies. Lightbulbs flicker to denote an eerie presence and storms break as a signal of turmoil to come. There's even a squeaky roundabout that turns under its own steam. At just short of two hours, The Orphanage is also too long for this kind of work.

Some of that excessive length is due to Bayona trying to frame a thoughtful drama at the same time as making the hairs on the back of the neck stand up like tombstones, so to some extent he can be for-given. As in Pan's Labyrinth, the director gives us time to get to know the main characters so we can better sympathise with their plight later on. This breaks the rules for a horror film.

Scary movies can get away with all kinds of atrocities because the viewer is deliberately detached from what is going on. It's difficult to get too upset about some cheerleader being chased by a chainsaw-wielding maniac when you've only been introduced to the victim 30 seconds before. How much more distressing it is to see bad things happen to good people we care about. Pan's Labyrinth, for instance, would not have broken quite so many hearts had someone other than the tiny, vulnerable Ofelia been at its core.

In The Orphanage it is an adult, Laura, who seeks our sympathy. That she gets it in such abundance is entirely down to Rueda's terrific performance. There's an aching vulnerability in Laura, as well as extraordinary strength. Never mind Ghostbusters: if there's something strange in your neighbourhood, she's the woman to call.

As for the right person to contact for a classic chiller, on current form you'd best make it a Latin type. With Alejandro Amenabar and The Others, then del Toro, and now Bayona, tales of the unexpected have suddenly become less predictable and more thrilling. Fright night, rest assured, is safe in their hands. Who needs sleep anyway?

There was a time when Spanish cinema was known for Pedro Almodovar, Penelope Cruz, and Javier Bardem and not much else.

Recently, though, Spain has become the home of some top-notch, old-fashioned horror movies and this one, made under the guidance of Guillermo del Toro, is no exception.

As in all the best horror movies, it is very difficult to tell you what it's about without giving away all of its secrets.

Suffice to say, it concerns a woman and her small son who move into an old orphanage. She wants to develop the building and convert it into a home for special needs children.

However, her son soon starts to develop a range of imaginary friends including Tomas, a particularly sinister and dangerous child.

After her son goes missing the woman begins to investigate the history of the orphanage and especially the fate of some of its children.

Director Bayona knows that the golden rule of horror is that what you don't see is much more effective than anything he can show you. He builds the mood and tension superbly throughout, giving you the fright of your life but still staying with the bounds of a commercially friendly 15 certificate.