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Over-rated, merely passable Spanish horror film, no better and no worse than the likes of John Fawcett’s The Dark, the various versions of The Ring, and the half-dozen other overly similar recent editions in the post-The Sixth Sense kids-ghosts-and-scares genre. It’s photographed with class, but Juan Antonio Bayona’s directing is not especially good, full of pointless lapses in camera perspective that disperse the remote threat of its spooks. The mildly compelling story is finally ruined by plot holes you could steer a supertanker through, with story integrity and continuity sacrificed a little too cavalierly for dramatic convenience. Why is everyone completely unaware that several kids disappeared back when? Where’s the flock of reporters after their remains are found? Why – so we’re informed by dialogue – some six months after the heroine is injured, is she still wearing a leg cast in one scene and limping along, but free of it and walking fine a couple of scenes and a few days later? Really half-hearted bus scares and gore effects conjure nothing but reminders of Bayona’s lack of skill. Nor does the film ever find a clear focus for its proliferating elements of infanticide, lingering guilt, childhood anxiety, mother-love, rationalism vs irrationalism, ills-of-institutions, etc, which means the film finally says nothing about any of these, chucking it all for a terribly unconvincing swing from attempted creepfest to warm-and-fuzzy uplift. The key creepy image, of the boy with a bag on his head, proves eventually to be not so much a grim totem but a cheap fright gimmick. A brief shot in the arm from Geraldine Chaplin, who’s always a welcomely grave presence these days, but otherwise a major “meh” from me.
