Spain's entry to the Foreign Film Oscar this year is a chiller produced by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) which also was the closing film in last August's Frightfest held in London.

A mother in her late 30s, Laura (Rueda) purchases her beloved childhood orphanage where she grew up, returning there with her doctor husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and her HIV-infected seven year old son Simon (Princep). Laura has dreams of restoring and reopening the long abandoned facility as a place for disabled children.

Once there, Laura discovers that the new environment awakens her son Simon's imagination, but the ongoing fantasy games he plays with a group of invisible friends quickly turn into something decidedly more disturbing when Simon himself goes missing.

Upon seeing her family increasingly threatened by the strange occurrences in the house, Laura looks to a group of parapsychologists for help in unravelling the mystery that has taken over the place.

With echoes of The Others, The Orphanage is an eerie and suspenseful trip into the supernatural and the image of a young child with a sack over his head is likely to have you on the edge of your seat. It's a particularly effective chiller because director Bayona skillfully keeps his trump cards in the plot close to his chest so it's a good while before you'll be able to piece together what's really going on, and before that, you've just got a missing child, an old house, and those classics - a creaking door hinge, noises on the stairs and dark corridors with a real sense that something tangible is lurking in the shadows.

If you're into horror flicks, you should find this satisfying enough in the scare stakes.