13 minutes on the phone with J.A. Bayona, director of The Orphanage, one of the most haunting haunted-house flicks ever made

By Steve Newton

I’ve reviewed over 350 horror movies during my journalism career, and a lot of them were pretty damn bad. But every once in a while I’d come across a real gem, like Spanish director J.A. Bayona‘s 2007 haunted-house flick, The Orphanage.

On December 18, 2007, a couple of days after I attended an advance screening of that film–which was nominated for 14 Goya Awards (Spain’s Oscars) and won seven of them–Bayona called me up from his home in Barcelona, and I told him how much I absolutely loved it.

I also asked him if he was a horror fan, which led him to thoughtfully describe the influences of and inspirations for The Orphanage.

Have a listen:

To read more than 350 of my reviews of horror movies released theatrically in North America between 1988 and 2018, go here.