"The Orphanage" doesn't need special effects to haunt us -- just one delicately disturbing idea: The most powerful ghosts are the ones we create ourselves.

In a simple children's game -- the Spanish equivalent of red light, green light -- we see how innocently such specters can take root. Silhouetted against a Gothic orphanage, a 7-year-old girl faces a tree as her friends stealthily advance. Something about these shadowy figures, their almost funereal school uniforms and those tiny, extending hands tells us there's more to this scene than youthful diversion. And we're immediately attuned to the ominous nuances that distinguish this elegant Spanish horror movie, produced by Guillermo del Toro, creator of last year's chilly masterpiece "Pan's Labyrinth."

Directed by Spanish first-timer Juan Antonio Bayona, "The Orphanage" hearkens to the more character-oriented tradition of such classic spookers as 1968's "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Innocents."

In "The Orphanage," the 7-year-old grows up to be the 37-year-old Laura (Belen Rueda), who purchases the former orphanage, intending to establish a home for special-needs children. How that childhood memory plays into her life, which she now shares with her husband, Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and adopted son Simon (Roger Princep), becomes the story's main thrust. Not long after the family moves in, Simon disappears. After conducting an extensive police search, and even resorting to a medium (a glowingly affecting Geraldine Chaplin), Laura turns her attention -- where else can she go? -- inward. Her confrontation with herself becomes the movie's most riveting section.

Stylistically, "The Orphanage," Spain's Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film, reflects the lessons of past classics. Eschewing the shock tactics of so much modern horror, in which fear is practically forced on the audience with jarring sound effects, loud music and over-the-top violence, it uses music and effects in an almost subliminal way. We're on edge, as much for the screaming absence of Hollywood-style "boo" cues as our own anticipation. And we know with increasing dread, that the scary stuff is coming.