Saw the new film from the producer of Pan’s Labyrinth which was brilliant. Creepy and suspenseful you get totally drawn into the nightmare of the mother who moves back to the orphanage where she grew up only to have her son disappear. In my ignorance I had assumed it was from the director of Pan’s Labyrinth, not the producer, because despite being different films they both had a very similar way of playing with reality. In both films the heroine descends into a nightmarish alternative world. You never know for certain when it’s real or in her head.
On one level the film could be dismissed as a standard ghost story: the cruelty inflicted on young children in the past returning to haunt, the creepy old lady that turns up out of nowhere, the imaginary friend that could be real, even the charlatan medium who could be a genuine psychic. Yet in this film it all works brilliantly, because it’s so much more than the suspense. You care deeply about the characters, worry about the marriage between the husband and wife, feel for the little boy. The pace is gentle without being slow, drawing out the themes and building up inexorably to its climax without any fabricated tension like a desperate race against time.
Ultimately with suspense, once you’re engaged with the characters you don’t need massive shocks or overbearing music to make you peep through your fingers, a squeaky door knob will do.
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