Well made, but some MASSIVE plot holes (SPOILERS)....

1) He didn't. That was Simon trying to get Laura to come to Thomas' "Little house".

2) She was either seeing a delusion or she was seeing the ghost of Thomas, as this is where he died.

3) I believe the implication is that someone poisoned them. I would suggest that it was probably Benigna to punish them for Thomas' death.

4) You should have paid more attention. She was Thomas' mother. She's actually not one of the children from when Laura was there, her height is misleading. She's not a child, she's an employee of the Orphanage.

From the wikipedia article about the movie: The police search Benigna's home and find evidence revealing that Benigna worked at the orphanage long ago and that she had a son named Tomás who was at the orphanage. He wore a sack-like mask over his head due to his deformity and was housed away from the other children in a separate room.

The police would probably assume that since she wasn't who she was claiming to be that the name was likely fake as well.

5) Not true. There was no smell of death because he was preserved through a process called natural mummification.

6) Thomas and Simon are friends. Thomas showed Simon where his "little house" was. That's how Simon got in there. It isn't until Laura puts the posts back into the closet that the door is jammed shut.

All of your "plot holes" are explained by paying attention.

Prof. Farnsworth: Oh. A lesson in not changing history from Mr. I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!

The worst plot holes, IMHO:

1- so Laura discovers Simón's drawings depicting with all detail the kids that she lived with during most of her childhood, but she doesn't connect the dots, and instead thinks it's all just part of a fertile child imagination.

2- apparently in Spain you get to poison 5 children (which btw are the entire population of a public institution) burn their bodies, hide the ashes in bags inside an oven, and walk free without even having to move to a different city.

3- the police goes through a very thorough search of the house but do not find the "secret" door leading to the basement. Nor do they find the ashes and bones in the shed.

4- the social worker suggests that some biological family member could have kidnapped Simón, but we never see nor is it implied that the police picks up this clue and rounds up the family members to ask them questions.

5- if Benigna knew the abuse her son Tomás was subjected to, isn't the logical course of action of most rational human beings to try to regain his custody instead of concocting a very complicated massive murder of children to avenge him after he's been (accidentally by the way) killed? Also in the movie it is never evident that the children were cruel to Tomás, except for the accident that kills him, but it was the stuff who abused him, so why exact revenge from the kids?

6- when Laura finds Benigna in the shed with a spade in her hands, why doesn't she confront her right then and there instead of going all the way back upstairs to ask stupid *beep* Carlos to come down? Why doesn't she just yell her lungs out? And why doesn't she mention the spade to anyone, especially the police (who apparently are the most incompetent in the world anyway)?

To me these are plot holes because the makers of the movie expect you to assume too much and to swallow way too much of illogical and irrational behavior just for convenience and to neatly tie up which otherwise are huge loose ends.

Sorry I don't have time to read all the post...but these are a few things I had a problem with, which others may have already raised.

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1.) It's implied that the son was knocking on the walls to be let out of the basement once the door became jammed shut with the heavy stuff thrown in front of it. If the sound of his knocking can carry through the house...why wouldn't his [supposed] cries to be released?

2.) The door to the basement is covered over with wallpaper which has to be torn off to enter. How did the son get down there if the door is papered over?

3.) Why didn't the son's rotting corpse tip any inhabitants off? I think this part of the story was months later in colder weather (?), which may slow decomposition, but I think our basic understanding in life is that when people die, their remains begin to rot. It's confusing to see Laura picking up such a solid object, when you'd think he'd be more slimy and falling apart (!) Not to mention covered with flies, etc. (I know she's first seeing a fantasy version of him, or his ghost or something, but still...)

As to the OP's << What exactly happened to the children?! The seance scene alludes to some sort of brutality/neglect, but that's all there is. More effort needed to be put in here, as the entirety of the scares are based around the mystery of the children >>

I agree. Though in the DVD special features they show some extra footage that was apparently cut from the film. One scene looks like it's the husband (?) clarrifying what the orphanage worker did re: poisoning the children. (At least, it looked like extra footage. Maybe that bit is actually in the final film and I missed it.) So basically, the screenwriter aparently agreed with you that this needed to be explained more fully...and then for whatever reason, the info was cut.

<< The only thing left for me to go look for is why the child Laura is hanging out with the ghosts (and then runs off so the adult Laura ghost can take over care of the Ghost Orphanage). Ghost Laura went "back in time", all the kids are alive in that time including child Laura, so there's a doppelganger of herself, who may now leave. Something like that? >>

Well, I don't know that the ghostly world can be taken too literally. Laura is dying, and probably a lot is rushing through her head. She may be having images of herself or memories of that place from the past, which are actually separate from the ghost children. I can see how this might be confusing, but I don't remember it throwing me off when I watched it. Although, I couldn't really tell the ghost children apart to well...so maybe the young Laura appeared more than I thought. But sometimes when you see the children, they are not ghosts. Such as in the opening scene, we see Laura in her youth as a cinematic way of introducing us to the location and this building's history.

I really wanted to like this film, but I have to agree that there are too many plot inconsistencies. It feels like that if the original script had been tweaked just a bit more, it would have been a fantastic film.

Here are the problems I noticed:

1. The wallpaper in the closet. You can clearly see and hear Laura tearing the wallpaper away to find the hidden door; this discovery is heavily alluded to in the opening credits, where the hands are tearing away layer after layer of wallpaper. So, if Laura had to tear away wallpaper to get to the basement, then how did Simon get in the basement in the first place?

2. Laura and Carlos were preparing the orphange to be a facility for special needs children; thus, wouldn't they need to have the orphanage thoroughly inspected for safety issues and thus find the basement--not to mention the creamated remains of the five orphans--long before Simon found it through the ghosts? The orphanage was built before anyone thought of using the basement as a place to hide away a disfigured child; thus, the basement should be in the building's blueprints, which I'm assuming that Laura and Carlos had to review as part of their building renovation process. At the very least, they would've consulted the blueprints when searching for Simon after he disappeared, just to make sure they looked everywhere.

3. I can buy the plot of Benigna killing the orphans out of revenge and hiding the creamated remains, but then why would she call attention to herself by posing as a social worker for Laura? For someone who got away with murder for so long, that's a really stupid thing to do.

4. The ghost of Tomas is stuck at the orphanage, but wasn't he the only kid at the orphange who was NOT an orphan? He seems content to spend his afterlife with the orphans who caused his death, not rejoin his mom. I wouldn't call this a plot hole, but it does seem like a very strange detail for the film to overlook.

5. Why did the ghosts first introduce themselves to Simon and not Laura, since she was at the orphanage at the same time they were? Also, why did Laura not appear to recognize the ghosts until she herself was dead? I don't think that the film states how long Laura was at that particular orphanage, but you'd think that she'd remember them in at least some capacity, right?

The Orphanage has great acting and great direction, but it's these nagging little details that keep it from being a great film.

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