This film restores my faith in contemporary horror thrillers!!!

Rating: 8/10 (28 September 2009)

Horror thrillers are going everywhere, I tell you. From gruesome accidents, to supernatural and nightmarish creatures, to psychos, to ghosts...there's a horror film about everything. It seems like ages ago since I saw a film that made children- children, for chrissake- look truly demonic and terrorizing. That film was, of course, "The Omen" (1976), but Jaume Collet-Serra's "Orphan" (2009) has sparked again that fear. In fact, the 'terrifyingly evil' child in "Orphan", I dare say, is at least ten times more fiendishly demonic than the child Antichrist Damian in "The Omen".
Having said that, this film is about a couple: Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard), who have two children but are emotionally recovering after the death of their third child, a stillborn. They both have issues, and that is a huge understatement. They try to live a nice, suburban life and at times they seem very, very happy. Their eldest, Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is your typical pre-tween playing Rock Band with his friends after school, playing pranks, and sneaking up to his tree-house to browse through Playboy magazines. Their youngest, Max (Aryana Engineer) is a cute, timid girl that's gone almost completely deaf. Kate is having the most problems trying to cope with the death of her baby, so she seeks constant help from her shrink (Margo Martindale, thankfully leaving behind her Hannah Montana's granny role), and she's quickly becoming your typical pill popper.
Anyway, Kate and John decide they want to adopt a child, and they go to this orphanage where they're immediately impressed by Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), a cute young girl who dresses like Little Bo Beep (like one of her cruel classmates points out), who has an amazing talent for painting, who's extremely polite, and has a smile that wins you over instantly. Kate and John learn from the orphanage's mother superior that Esther was brought here from Russia, where her house caught fire and her parents died. Altruisticly, our main heroes adopt the adorable Esther and take her home.
Everything is fine at first. But, then again, this is a horror film. Esther doesn't seem to be the cute little girl we all thought her to be. She knows and uses a variety of bad words, has no problem killing small animals, roams around the house at night and watches her new parents have sex, pushes other children off tall garden sets, antagonizes Kate against her husband and just about disturbs everyone around her. And when the orphanage's mother superior discovers some really disturbing info on Esther's past, she really pulls out the big guns.
As I watched this, I gasped and groaned in terror at how conniving, evil and downright loathe-able this Esther child was. Isabelle Fuhrman has really outdone herself with her role, showing us what I believe is the most hate-able and terrifying villain this century has seen. And Vera Farmiga gives a perfect performance too, as the helpless mother who sees through Esther's diabolic mind but whom no one believes. Sparks constantly fly between these two: the evil and protected child against the resolute but helpless mother. It was a nice change in family roles, and I found it refreshing. Also, this thriller doesn't follow the same formula for scares and thrills every other horror film nowadays pulls out. It bases its horror on the character of Esther herself, and we find chills running down our spine because of the things Esther says and does.
The screenplay is, besides the child's superb acting, the strongest point of the film. It's perfectly developed, it has no plot holes I could discover, and in fact, it has the emotional depth and the pitch-perfect character development that reminded me of an M. Night Shyamalan film. You find yourself engrossed in the events unfolding on screen, and relating to the couple and feeling frustrated and irate because of the problems this devil child is bringing on them. And that's one of the things recent horror films fail to understand: that the power of truly psychological horror and tension is NOT a result of gore, or grotesque beasts, or ghostly entities or sudden shocks, but of the drama and tension between the characters. This film, basically, revived my hopes for contemporary horror thrillers.
"Orphan" is not the best picture of the year. But it is one of the best movie-going experiences you'll have this year. And the end has a terrifyingly disturbing twist that audiences have gone nuts over. See it! You won't be disappointed.
Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 4!