It's suddenly obvious that the first decade of the 21st century is a golden age for ghost stories at the movies, and The Orphanage is perhaps the finest of many.

For decades, the classic cinematic ghost tales were from the era of black and white: The Uninvited, made in 1944, and The Haunting, from 1963.

In 1974, Nicholas Roeg directed the brilliant film Don't Look Now, based on a novella by Daphne Du Maurier, but its tone of grief and dread was overshadowed by the shock and horror of The Exorcist and a subsequent era in which demons, zombies and slashers dominated the big screen.

The final year of the decade of the 70's brought some gems with The Changeling and The Shining, with the Stephen King film remembered for Jack Nicholson's axe wielding psychotic, more than for the restless spirits of The Overlook.

For a good twenty years, ghosts became the stuff of big budget comedies, with Ghostbusters, The Frighteners and a movie version of Casper holding sway.
During that time, the best ghost stories were relegated to cable TV or straight-to-video release: Tommy Lee Jones and Virginia Madsen in Gotham; Aidan Quinn and Kate Beckinsale in Haunted.

Then, in 1999, M. Night Shyamalan revived the ghost story genre with The Sixth Sense, and in the years since have come What Lies Beneath, The Others, The Devil's Backbone, 1408, and now The Orphanage.

What makes The Orphanage so great is the way in which it weaves the most traditional of ghost story conventions with modern elements of horror, always deepening the emotional core of its story by revealing tragedy after tragedy but never sinking into overwrought melodrama.

The story begins as we are introduced to Laura, her husband Carlos, and their young son Simón. Laura was an adopted orphan, and she and Carlos have adopted the orphan Simón, keeping his past and his uncertain future due to an incurable illness as secrets to him.

The family moves into the orphanage that was Laura's childhood home where she plans on becoming a caretaker to special needs children, and soon, Simón begins to find imaginary friends to play with. What begins as a harmless game played by a lonely child, soon becomes the source of unimagined grief and horror, as the hidden history of the orphanage begins to be revealed.

The Orphanage offers a taste of everything one hopes for in a ghostly tale of the supernatural; creepiness, suspense, shock, revulsion, empathy, and many of the "oh, no," moments that come when our worst fears come true in a sudden reveal. The edifice that was found to embody the orphanage itself is perfect, both coldly austere and yet comfortingly fortress-like, and the shadowy rooms within are captured on film as the perfect places for ghosts to gather.

This is a movie to chill the blood and yet warm the heart, with a conclusion that few will see coming and none will ever forget.