starts of finteresting, but then comes Esther....

Rating: 6/10 (3 August 2009)

Orphan opens with one of those truly mortifying scenes that can actually go beyond typical horror into something else, that visceral terror that comes with a catastrophic event. This being the death of a baby, as Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) is about to give birth, sees blood under her gown waiting in the hospital, and is told her child has died before even giving birth. Then it gets more and more disturbing: her husband John is filming this devastating scene with his camcorder, and he presents the dead baby to her as she's sobbing in tears. It's safe to say this and The Descent's opening scene are top them all when it comes to the worst scenes that involve personal, familial horror with children (in the most gratifying way imaginable, if that make sense, when it comes to filming it).
And then the rest of the plot unfolds... and it never matches up to that, and if anything becomes sillier and more predictable, a Lifetime movie in Omen-skin or Good Son clothing. While early on we get a moving scene with Kate and her little girl Max and how she reads to her at night even though she's deaf, and we get the sense this will be well acted, then comes a scene that turns everything else that will happen in the movie. Esther, from the moment she appears on screen, has not a shred of subtlety about her, nor in Isabelle Fuhrman's performance. You know from her oh-so sweet little speech to her soon-to-be stepfather that this is just trouble. A big part of it, I think, is that her character is European (thought to be Russian for at least most of the movie) and so she's like Natasha Fatale in miniature form and pigtails. To say she's unbelievable is an understatement, even if once or twice among the DOZENS of times she's hiding behind a corner or behind a door listening it gets creepy.
But boy oh boy is this movie silly. You get sucked into the story, and it's entertaining, but it's also ultimately about as substantial as a daytime soap opera with the big TWIST so preposterous that you'll be laughing about it long after the movie ends (not to mention a few questions about, you know, the difference between little girls and adult women). It relies on clichés eventually, and it's sad since Vera Farmiga and Stellan Sarsgaard are trying their best to give genuine dramatic performances. They aren't anything to laugh at, at least too much, but it's the script that wears it down, those situations and scenes where Esther ratchets up her evil-bitch-meter or kills another hapless person who may "rat" on her. It ends up being a great audience movie, but also so stupid and without much worth or for anything we've heard (i.e. the lesson is, I guess, don't adopt any child from Russia or whatever-stan, or that two is sometimes enough), and the violence compounds the silliness.