It's a sad fact that it might be hard for Bayona to get out from behind the shadow of his far-too-famous producer, because del Toro's The Devil's Backbone, a ghost film set during the Spanish Civil War, is beloved among both the horror and art film crowd. That be as it may, certain aspects of The Orphanage set it apart and give it an identity of its own, particularly its look at how a mother deals with the loss of a child set amidst familiar horror trappings.

It begins with a scene at an orphanage with a group of young kids playing a game similar to "Red Light, Green Light" before we see a young girl named Laura be picked up and taken away by her new adoptive parents. Decades later, Laura's husband has bought the orphanage with plans to turn it into a home for disabled children, and they've moved in with their 7-year-old son Simón. The boy immediately starts acting odd (or odder) talking about an imaginary friend named Tómas. At a party for the opening of the hospital, Simón mysteriously disappears, and Laura immediately suspects a strange old woman who has been lurking around the house. Months later and Laura is still convinced her boy is still alive or that his spirit is haunting the creepy old house. To say much more about the general plot might give far too much away, but there's a lot of depth at play here and many levels to the story and the characters, which slowly unfold as we learn more about what happened with the orphanage after Laura was taken away as a child.

For the first 20 minutes of the movie, you might feel as if you know exactly what's going on and what's going to happen, as it goes for the big scares and other cliches of ghost movies, particularly the creepy kid variety as epitomized by The Sixth Sense and The Others (the latter also directed by a Spanish filmmaker). At one point after Simón's disappearance, there's even an eerie seance scene that will immediately remind some of the Zelda Rubinstein moments in the original Poltergeist.

That said, this is an incredibly creepy movie with lots of bonafide scares that might make you jump out of your seat if you've gotten too laissez faire about what might happen next, and once it starts, it never lets up as it keeps piling on the scares and surprises as it builds to a surprisingly poignant conclusion.

Belén Rueda gives a stunning performance as Laura, and she has to do a lot more than act scared and scream a lot, as might often be the case. This really is a performance on a par with that of Nicole Kidman in The Others, although there's an added level from the grief over her missing boy and the fear that she'll never get him back.

Bayona's certainly a director to watch, as he clearly has a sharp eye for visuals and and for creating a mood, and it will be interesting to see if he decides to stay in the horror genre or try to explore other avenues for his next film, because one gets the impression from this movie that he's a director that can do anything.

Rating: 9/10

Public Screenings: Fri. Sept 7 at 9pm (Scotiabank) and Sun. Sept 9 at 12pm (Isabel Bader)

The Orphanage opens in limited release on December 28.

Like The Orphanage, there's something to be said about not knowing too much about Julian Schnabel's third movie in ten years before going into it. Knowing the general premise or source material might make it a harder sell, since it mainly stars French actors who aren't particularly well known in the United States, but it's also a far more meaningful experience if you watch this story unfold for the first time without knowing a thing.

Then again, if you already know that it's based on the autobiographical novel by French fashion editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who at the age of 42 had a sudden stroke that left him completely paralyzed from head to toe except for one eye, forcing him to communicate using a complex series of blinking, you may already have some sort of expectations and more than likely you'd be wrong. (Incidentally, Javier Bardem, the Oscar-nominated star of Schnabel's Before Night Falls, also starred in The Sea Inside, another drama about a paraplegic, not taken quite to this extreme. Ironically, that movie was directed by Alejandro Amenabar, who directed Kidman in The Others. See? Everything ties together.)

As Julian Schnabel's film begins, we're clearly seeing things from the perspective of a hospital patient, and we quickly realize we're seeing what he sees, hearing what he hears and listening to his thoughts. It's not exactly the first movie to take this approach and as we spend the ten to fifteen minutes learning about his paralysis, one might start to worry that we're in for two hours of this (bad pun alert) forced perspective. Fortunately, this isn't the case, and eventually, we break away from this stagnant point-of-view to a flashback of the time leading up to Bauby's stroke and when we finally see him as the vegetable this vibrant and gregarious playboy has become, it's quite shocking.

What makes Schnabel's film unique is the fact that we're able to hear Bauby's thoughts while watching him trying to communicate with friends and family, often in vain, using this complex and time-consuming method of communication that would be aggravating to anyone, let alone the woman who is hired to use this technique to transcribe the book on which this movie is based.

It's fairly complex in its use of meta, because much like Charles Kaufman's "Adaptation" we're essentially watching a movie about Bauby writing the book on which the movie is based, and Schnabel incorporates a lot of flashbacks to the events leading to his stroke and actual dreams to embellish this experience. These are particularly haunting as they're gorgeous, lushly scored scenes which end abruptly as we're returned to Bauby's trapped state.

Mathieu Amalric, who is slowly becoming one of France's top actors, gives an impeccable performance as Bauby, and though for much of the film you don't see him, even the way he uses his voice to make us feel like we're inside his head helps us to empathize with the aggravation he feels with his difficulty to communicate.

Emmanuelle Seigner, another one of France's finest, shines as Bauby's estranged wife Céline, who comes to his aid and tries to rekindle their romance after she was left for another woman, but in one of the film's most powerful moments, she has to act as a translator between that woman and her husband. In one of the more stirring flashbacks, Bauby shaves his elderly father played by Max von Sydow, who's unhappy about being trapped in his apartment, little realizing that his son will soon be trapped in his own body.

Frankly, any director that includes the Dirtbombs' version of "Chains of Love" is going to get high marks from me, but even without using such an obvious way to this critic's heart, Schnabel has clearly made one of the best films of the year, one that's about as close to perfection as you'll get for a movie dealing with a subject matter that might seem impossible to handle in an entertaining way. Schnabel's ability to create a moving and often haunting experience for the viewer and keep one entranced with every aspect of Bauby's situation makes this such a special experience.

Rating: 9.5/10

Public Screenings: Tues. Sept. 11 at 6pm (Elgin/VISA) and Thurs. Sept. 13 at 3pm (Ryerson)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly opens in limited release on December 19.