El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

El Orfanato (The Orphanage) tells the story of Laura, a woman who has grew up in an orphanage, but has returned to live there as a grown woman with her husband, Carlos and her adopted son, Simón. She intends to reopen the orphanage as a facility for disabled children. Amidst all the chaos of renovation, Simón claims to have "invisible" friends, one of which he calls Tomás. Laura and Carlos are hosting a party for potential patrons of the care facility, when Simón comes up missing.

Simón

Horror falls very short of describing The Orphanage. While there are frightening moments, it is the symbols of the movie that are most powerful. In order to describe them the best I can I'm going to list a bunch of bullet points that probably won't make sense at first, but hopeful they will:

Symbols:

• Shells
• Neverland
• Reverting back to old ways
• Doorknobs
• Masks
  
  

Near the beginning of the film, Simón ventures into a cave that is next to the seashore. His mother goes to look for him and discovers him talking to an invisible friend. On their way back to the house, Simón makes a trail of seashells back to the house, so "his friend can come and visit." This friends ends up being the ghost of Tomás, a boy from the orphanage with a disfigured face, who accidentally drowned. While Tomás' presence in the house is initially haunting, his presence soon becomes a good signal. 

The ghosts from the house send Laura on a scavenger hunt that not only leads her to their hidden bodies after they were murdered, but also to a doorknob with a shell on it. This is the point in which seashells become a good sign. They are a reminder of her lost son. 

Throughout the film there are references to Neverland, from the children's classic Peter Pan. Simón is very curious about this place. He wonders if the children in Neverland ever die. He asks Laura if they can go there. (Simón learns that he is HIV positive and doesn't have long to live.)

As a way to remember the past (and communicate with the ghost children) Laura changes the house to be the closest thing she remembers the orphanage being like. This return to the past is her way of reconciling her past with what she must do to find her son. She even prepares a meal and rings the dinner bell in hopes that the children will come running to eat. 

Finally Laura discovers that they way to connect to the children is by playing a game with them. As she begins to play the game, the children appear and lead her to find her son. 

They lead her to a closet that has a secret door hidden in the back. She uses the doorknob that she has and opens the door. Before Simón went missing, he told his mother that his invisible friends liked to play games with him. If he solved their scavenger hunt, then he got to ask for a wish. Laura is at the end of their scavenger hunt, and finds her son's dead body at the bottom of the stairs. She discovers he must have tumbled down them to go visit Tomás (who lived in the basement). 

Tomás

When she goes to pick him up, he is wearing Tomás' mask. Masks are an interesting element in the story. Tomás is shunned by the other children at the orphanage because of his disfigurement, and was also kept isolated from the rest of the children. He wore a mask out of shame. When Simón became his friend, he shed the mask and gave it to his only friend. 

At the end of the film, Laura mistakenly takes the wrong combination of pills and makes a wish that Simón come back alive. As she dies, Simón "comes back alive". Simón also makes a wish that Laura be able to watch over him and his friends forever. As all of the children appear and gather around Laura, Simón brings up Neverland again. He says, "Now you're like Wendy from the story." Essentially she does become Wendy for children that can never die.