The Orphanage

I'd meant to see this at the cinema when it was released but it didn't happen, so as soon as it came out on DVD I put it at the top of my rental list. I had to wait a while before it came, and it was pretty near the top of the DVD charts for quite a while, so it was obviously extremely popular. Anyway it finally arrived, so I had a real sense of anticipation.
Was it worth it? I watched it twice, as I was pretty sleepy the first time and knew that I may have missed the odd little chunk or two. Also I wanted to see it again to make sure that my feelings of flatness after seeing it were justified.
It's beautifully filmed, but where have I seen that look? It's the greyish-blue tinge to everything, and the creepy, country-house setting, very different from the National Trust look of many British films. We first saw it in The Others a few years ago, a ghost story set in the Channel Islands during the 1940s and it set the template. I thought it was excellent - scary children, weird, ghostly sets, and Nicole Kidman, brittle, fragile and heartbreaking, producing one of her best performances and Alejandro Amenabar proved himself an extremely accomplished director. Certainly Spanish cinema has produced some extraordinarily original films in recent years, and The Others, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labrynth have been prime examples.
The Orphanage is in this vein but, unlike those films it didn't convince. I'm happy to completely suspend disbelief when watching films, but the film has to make you do it, and this one didn't.
It obviously succeeded with many, and the reviews were adulatory, so maybe it's just me.
The Orphanage's narrative doesn't compel. It lacked narrative drive and structure and, although it was well acted and beautifully filmed, it was all over the place. The basic story, that of the childless couple attempting to set up a home for children with severe disabilities in the country house in which the wife, herself an orphan, had been brought up. The house had been an old-fashioned orphanage and the couple had now bought it. Their adopted son begins to collect imaginary friends, who turn out to be the ghosts of his mother's playmates, who were murdered....and so it went on. I've forgotten who the murderer was.
An implausible scenario, which doesn't disqualify it by any means; after all, the same might be said for many of the greatest films. But I didn't believe a word of it and the ending was ludicrous and had a tacked-on feel. It's one of those films where I have a blind spot - it doesn't happen too often, but occasionally I find myself out of step. Oh well......