It is a sensational piece of genre subterfuge, the narrative an increasingly byzantine maze overflowing in deft twists and turns.

There are reminders here - as there were in the recent Irish horror The Lodgers - that the haunted house movie still contains possibilities. Neither will it, however, keep you awake at night like The Orphanage.

Sergio G. Sánchez struggles to locate the frights, with underwritten characters draining his shocks of their emotional payoff.

What begins as an innocent, old-fashioned children's tale takes a detour to creepy, disturbing places in this psychological horror from the writer of 2007 hit The Orphanage.