Creepy thriller

Rating: 8/10 (5 August 2009)

For those of you that like thrillers like "Single White Female," "Fatal Attraction," or "Audition," this is another shocker in the same vein. Although "Orphan" has some genuine thrills and scares, it made me feel a little unclean at times.
When "Orphan" begins, we meet the Colemans: Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Saargard), and their children Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) and Max (Arayana Engineer). After the stillborn death of their third child, Kate and John decide to adopt one. At the orphanage, they become enchanted with a little girl named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman). At first, she appears the child from heaven: she immediately bonds with Max, and learning sign language to communicate with her (Max is deaf). But strange things start happening around Esther...
This is what "The Good Son" could have been, had it been better written and acted. Yet, even though it rectifies the main fault I had with that movie (nothing the psychotic Macauley Culkin character did was really evil enough), that comes at a price. Children (specifically Esther) act violently in this film, and at times it crosses the line between suspense-building and unsettling. While I'll agree that having a child commit this crimes gives the film an extra punch, some (though not all) of the scenes left me feeling dirty and violated.
Still, all in all, this is an impressive thriller. The most important part of a thriller is a good villain, and Esther is truly frightening. At age 12, Isabelle Fuhrman has quite the capability to scare the living hell out of anyone. She's right up there with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Eihi Shiina, or more applicably, Jacob Kogan from "Joshua," which coincidentally also starred Vera Farmiga. The other cast members acquit themselves well too. Vera Farmiga is in top-form as Kate, though she's been here before (in fact, she plays almost the exact same character as she did in "Joshua"). Peter Saarsgard, a talented actor from the independent film circuit, plays a type, but he does solid work. However, the script calls for him to be dumber than is realistically plausible, and Saarsgard can't make us believe that his character is really that oblivious. The child actors are great as well. Jimmy Bennett is solid in an unspectacular part of Daniel. He's not really excited to have a new sister, and his friends make fun of him for how Esther acts. But Arayana Engineer is perfect as Max. She's adorable, and although very young, Engineer draws our sympathy like a magnet. We never stop rooting for her.
Apart from the amorality of some of the scenes, not everything that director Jaume Collet-Serra does works. He attempts to create scares where they have no place, and the failures of these elicited laughs from the audience. Speaking of laughs, there is a bit of humor in the film, and that works. However, one of the scenes is so over-the-top that it's unintentionally hilarious.
I recommend it, if you've got a thick skin for this sort of thing.