The Best Horror Movie I've Seen in a Long Time

Rating: 10/10 (1 September 2009)

'Orphan' is a great horror movie! It is made all the more effective in the fact that the characters are three dimensional and complex. This is one of the few recent movies where I was more interested in the characters than the action on screen.
It would have been easy to have had the evil orphan, Esther, move into the perfect family and disrupt their harmony, but the family in this film has such dysfunction that the destruction caused by her is more dramatic. The horror of the situation is made all the more palpable because you care about the family members, especially the mother, who has lost a great deal of reliability as a result of her alcoholism. This also makes the scenes where she can't get anyone to believe her about Esther's true nature more authentic as opposed to being a plot device.
The movie also has a plot twist that would seem implausible, but, because the film-makers have kept you sold on the reality of the situation, you buy it. In light of what I call the 'Sixth Sense' phenomenon, I usually roll my eyes when a film does a plot twist that changes the entire context of the story. This time, however, it's like a kick in the gut!
The final 20 minutes of this movie are so intense that audience I saw it with got very vocal in response to what they were seeing on the screen. In addition to that, Esther is such a malevolent force of nature that the entire audience clapped when she finally got her comeuppance. My advice: see this movie with someone you can grab onto during the many moments of suspense!