Juan Antonio Bayona, 2007
In a word - terrific. And oddly enough, it's not really a horror movie, in a sense. Sure, there are some (very well executed) haunting sequences of the classical ghost story sort, but the supernatural elements are of arguable substance (I vote yes, but appreciate the ambiguity). It's really, at the core, a story about how the mysterious disappearance of a child affects the parents. On the other hand, that's a pretty horrifying scenario, and the ongoing mystery becomes very nightmarish (even if you ignore the ghosts). Then there's the. . . I don't want to call it a twist, exactly, but let's say revelation, near the end, which is tremendously upsetting (I'm trying not to delve into spoilers here).
So it is a horror movie, then. Just not the horror movie I was expecting.
I don't want to say much more, because it's really better to just see for yourself - although if you have young children, consider yourself warned. Let me just add that the biggest problem I had with this movie is that a prosthetic effect on a traffic victim was kind of silly. And that's not a very big problem at all.
9.5/10
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