This movie is about an endocrine (hormone) disorder many people are unfamiliar with

Rating: 10/10 (5 October 2015)

"Orphan" tells the story of the Coleman family-father Jon (Peter Sarsgaard), mother Kate (Vera Farmiga) and their 2 children, Daniel aka Danny (Jimmy Bennett) who is a preteen and small deaf daughter, Maxine aka Max (Aryana Engineer). Not all is well in the Coleman household, though.
Kate had a devastating miscarriage of 3rd child/2nd daughter, Jessica. The baby's remains are planted inside a bunch of white roses in the family greenhouse. This loss, coupled with Kate's alcoholism and Max's near drowning in the backyard lake have devastated this family. Jon and Kate are seeing a therapist Alice (Margo Martindale) to help them with the loss and heal their family. Jon and Kate want to adopt a child because both of them want to move on with their lives and share their love with a child.
Both of them go to St. Mariana's Home for Girls to find a new daughter. Immediately, Jon and Kate are charmed by a 9-year-old Estonian orphan named Esther. Jon found Esther in the classroom painting a picture of a sad mother lion who could't find her cubs. Esther painted the cubs in the picture and the lioness was happy at last.
Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder) says Esther's previous family had died in a house fire. She says Esther is a well-mannered, highly intelligent girl who wears conservative dresses and ribbons around her neck and wrists. The only time Esther gives the nuns trouble is when they try to remove these ribbons.
Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther is wonderful! One minute she is sweet and charming, the next minute she is an evil little thing with designs on Jon, her adopted father. Kate begins to see her adopted daughter as a menace and so does Danny. Max and Jon think Esther is wonderful until the girl shows them her dark side. It doesn't help that Kate found pictures of Esther's previous families in the Bible Esther carries around and an inscription inside the cover for the Saarne Institute.
Kate does some investigating and discovers the Saarne Institute is a mental hospital. She sends them a photo of Esther via the computer. While the family is in the hospital with Danny after Esther nearly killed him in a tree house fire, Dr. Varva the director of the institute calls Kate.
The news he has for her is totally unexpected-Esther is not a 9-year-old girl. She is a thirty-three year old mental patient named Leena Klemmer. Leena suffers from a hormone disorder called hypopituitarism. In other words, her pituitary gland doesn't produce the needed growth hormone and she is stuck inside a child's body. Leena as Esther seduces Jon and he spurns her. Esther runs to her and cries. She removes her child's dentures, makeup, and breast binding to reveal the woman she really is.
"Orphan" is a wonderfully suspenseful movie with an evil, but at the same time tragic villainess. Esther can't help that she was born with an endocrine disorder that won't let her achieve the height and endowments of a grown woman. In a way, the viewer feels sorry for people who suffer from endocrine disorders because it is not their fault that they have these disorders.
All of the actors in the movie are excellent with special mention paid to Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther/Leena. It is not easy a child actor under the age of 11 to play a little girl and a woman at the same time and Isabelle pulls it off wonderfully!