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USA: Michael Bay, 2007

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France: Andrzej Zulawksi, 1984

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USA: David Slade, 2007

Seriously, if you're considering giving this a go, my advice would be "don't bother". The premise is interesting, but the whole thing is botched on just about every possible level. Josh Hartnett makes for a dreadful, inexpressive lead, and the director, David Slade, seems to possess absolutely no sense of pacing, nor does he appear to have the first clue about generating tension. Scene after scene is botched by clumsy choreography and camerawork, and a general sense that he's working with a script which simply doesn't have enough material to withstand the running time. Whole days seem to pass in which nothing happens, and the situation becomes so tedious that the script resorts to having the characters arbitrarily say things like "We can't stay here" (despite them having been perfectly safe in their current location for several days) and staging foolhardy escape missions that you just know are going to get someone killed. I'm normally the last person to bring out the "logic" card in what is ultimately a brainless splatter movie, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could be as stupid as this film's troop of hapless dolts.

Every "bump in the night" cliché is routinely trotted out, and, despite characters dropping like flies in the most brutal manner imaginable, it's impossible to care about any of them, as they are simply too bland and unlikeable. Most of them are completely interchangeable, to the extent that, every time a character said "Where's [insert name here]?" or "What about [insert name here]?", my immediate response would be "Search me! I don't even know what [insert name here] looks like!"

After hearing good things about this film, I felt utterly robbed by it. Thats 113 minutes of my life that are gone forever.

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USA: Arthur Penn, 1967

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USA/Germany: Peter Berg, 2007

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Original title: El Orfanato
Spain/Mexico: J. A. Bayona, 2007

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