An average movie

Since this flick had a solid reputation, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, even though this movie had been apparently a huge success in Spain when it was released, to be honest, I really struggled to get into the damned thing. First of all, in my opinion, the start was actually rather awkward. I mean, you had this woman who bought the orphanage where she lived as a young girl and she was supposed to turn it into a place to take care of disabled children. On top of that, she had adopted a boy who was also HIV positive, who had some imaginary friends and who also could see ghosts. And I forgot to mention that the house might be haunted as well. Seriously, it was just way too much for me. Fortunately, when Simón started to get involved himself and his mother into some quest game, then, I finally started to get more interested in this tale. Still, I’m not surprised that this movie was produced by Guillermo del Toro. Indeed, pretty much like the movies directed by del Toro, there was a great mood and it was visually really engaging but there was something seriously lacking in this story. I mean, there was even a massive plot-hole. Indeed, while what happened to Tomás was cleared out at some point, it was never explained what happened to the other children. I mean, they made a big fuss that these kids might have been killed and, yet, we never got to the bottom of this at all after all which was rather frustrating. Still, I have to admit that I really liked the ending though. Indeed, suddenly, it became all possible that everything actually happened in the mind of the main character after all which made the whole thing interestingly ambiguous. If they would have put more focus on this idea, that everything might be happening only in the mind of the main character, it would have been so much better in my opinion. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t work for me, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.