I had to watch The Orphanage two times to understand the movie by Del Toro. The main character, Laura, lived in the orphanage as a little girl. She leaves the orphanage and comes back as an adult to live in the old house. In the movie, the English subtitles said that the orphaned kids were being poisoned. The kids accidentally murdered Tomas, a little boy. The mother of Tomas was Benigna Escobedo. Benigna got revenge on the kids by poisoning them. She then stuffed the corpses of the children in bags. The ghosts in the house make noises in Laura's home.

Loved this movie...suspenseful and the ending was fantastic. Love anything Guillermo Del Toro!

The 'orphanage' looks a lot like the place I was taken in the late 1950's. I was abducted from my home in Texas, turned over to someone who proceeded to beat me in the face and starve me to death. My abductor bragged about altering my birth certificate and it was used to traffick me to South America twice and Iran once. There were other children at the 'orphanage' in Cochabamba, Bolivia. They spoke different languages, had fear in their eyes and seemed confused. I heard screams in the movie, "They are experimenting on us!"--with no face to match. As though it was a haunting parallel universe that we could only know. The rest of the world could not handle the truth. The reality they have accepted is that everything is done for the good of the whole. In reality, we were just a continuation of the experiments conducted during the holocaust. Bluebird, MK Ultra, Polio vaccines and TB treatments to name a few. Orphans were not cared for like the good book says, they were exploited for reasons beyond to a realm i call evil. These children are haunting, I am haunted and you will be haunted. Phase I experiments continue. Whose child will be next? More about this at Yahoo Group-Peuple

Well thought out story, spooky, and had a surprise ending.

Excellent, high suspense film. The lead female steals the show. You feel her joy, fright, desperation in whichever scene she has. It has a quiet build up with subtle layers. Personally I perfer movies with more dialogue. However if you enjoy sitting there and having a movie wash over you with the music and atmosphere: you will love it! Not the traditional scary, horror movie; its more dramatic with high creep factor.

Very well done. American Studios take note.

Juan Bayona presents us with a ghost story that challenges our sense of reality by blurring the line between objective truth and subjective experience. Thirty years after being adopted from the “Good Shepherd Orphanage”, Laura Sanchez returns with her husband Carlos and young son Simon. She intends to buy the mouldering old building, long since abandoned, and turn it into a group home for children with special needs. One day however, after exploring a seaside cave, Simon claims to have met a new friend hiding in the shadows. This is hardly surprising as the overly inventive child already has two imaginary playmates; but when he invites “Tomas” home with him things start going bump in the night, doors mysteriously slam shut, and Simon ultimately disappears without a trace. Bayona realizes that children and adults inhabit very different realities and that adults will often indulge a child’s magical view of the world with little white lies and fanciful stories designed to shield them from some of life’s harsher lessons. But sometimes make-believe can backfire and an innocent game can develop ominous overtones... This film packs some very well-placed jolts aided by creepy camerawork and unsettling sound effects. It has an air of gothic horror about it that is truly chilling. Regrettably, Bayona asks us to take some pretty large leaps of faith: an elaborate game of dress-up towards the end seems like overkill; a scene involving psychic researchers recalls the excesses of Poltergeist ; and the dark secret at the heart of the film, involving a myopic nanny and sinister flour sacks, has too many holes in it to be effective. All the clues do add up in the end, but the Peter Pan finale left me feeling vaguely cheated.

This movie is in my top five horror movies. It's brilliant and lovely.

Brilliant slow-burn horror film produced by del Toro. Well worth a look if you enjoy quality film making.

Nothing new in this movie as far as special effects that we haven’t seen 1000 times before. The movie was very cheaply made cheaply acted also in other words, it was a dumb movie.