Orphan

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2010)

From director Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax), I only decided to try this film from seeing a short trailer, and overhearing a conversation about it, and I thank goodness I did. Basically Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John Coleman (Jarhead's Peter Sarsgaard) have spent a year rebuilding their relationship after Kate gave up her alcoholism, losing her job, her daughter Maxine 'Max' becoming deaf and dumb, John having a love affair, and the abortion of their baby Jessica. They decide to adopt a child, and they find what seems to be the perfect child with intelligent nine-year-old Russian girl Esther (twelve-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman). While Max welcomes her to their home almost immediately, and Esther settles in very quickly, brother Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is not keen on his new stepsister, he's especially upset when she kills a pigeon. Over time though Kate becomes suspicious of Esther, with her manipulation for attention, knowing other words for sex, and pushing a bullying girl down a slide breaking her ankle. Kate voices her concerns to head of the orphanage Sister Abigail (Face/Off's CCH Pounder), who confirms that strange things have happened when Esther is around. Esther overhears, she kills the Sister with the hammer to the head, and forces Max to help her hide the evidence, and she threatens Daniel for seeing something. After the orphanage tells Kate they can't confirm where Esther came from, she picks the flowers from Jessica's memorial plant, and in the scuffle it looked like Kate broke her arm, and of course, Esther does just that to herself. After a near accident with the car and Max, and buying two bottles of wine (tipping away one), Kate is told Esther came from the Saarne Institute, before John confronts her about drinking again. Daniel knows there is evidence to get rid of Esther, but before he can get it he is caught in a tree house fire, which he narrowly escapes, and Esther tries to kill him again smothering him with a pillow in hospital. Next thing Esther is made up and trying to seduce a drunk John while Kate is away, and he realises Kate was right all along and threatens to call the orphanage to take her away. When Kate comes out of sedation, she is called by the Saarne Institute director who has seen Esther's picture, and he confirms that she is a 33-year-old mental patient called Leena Klammer with a form of dwarfism and growth disorder called hypopituitarism, she has spent most of her life posing as a little girl. So Kate is rushing home to stop Esther from endangering the lives of Max and John (already dead from stabbing), and it all comes to a head on the icy lake Max lost her voice and hearing in, and the evil girl gets what she deserves. Also starring Karel Roden as Dr. Varava, Margo Martindale as Dr. Browning and Rosemary Dunsmore as Grandma Barbara. This is a top notch nut-case film, up there with Fatal Attration and Misery, with a "little girl" played to terrifying perfection by Fuhrman, with great support from Farmiga and Sargaard. This is one of the only films that I can see being as good as The Omen with the evil child premise, and this film just laps it up with plenty of tension, suspense and terror, making it a fantastic and most recommendable horror thriller. Good!