I had the opportunity to speak with Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona twice this year regarding his debut feature The Orphanage, opening nationwide today. Our first conversation at Toronto will be published next month in my new gig movieScope (out of London); but, my more recent conversation here in San Francisco with both Bayona and scriptwriter Sergio Sánchez is up and running today at Greencine.
Dave Hudson gathers up the continuing critical response to the film—including his aggregates from Cannes, Toronto and New York—at The Greencine Daily.
Cross-published on The Evening Class. Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Wells.
Funny enough I saw this again today and got so caught up in the film I forgot about being on the lookout for various things. I certainly caught a lot more overall on the second viewing though and seeing clues scattered throughout early on that add up in later parts of the film.
One lady in the audience screamed bloody murder in one of the scares of the film.
Watching it from a more Peter Pan POV overall was really illuminating!
One thing of note I noticed in particular was one scene where Belen is by the roses and you can softly hear for a split second the laughter of the children in the background.
Isn't it strange how the sound of children laughing can be so ... ominous? It would be quite a list of films where that sound has instilled fear.