Isabelle Fuhrman is great as orphan Esther

Rating: 7/10 (22 May 2011)

After suffering a miscarriage Kate and her husband John decide to adopt nine-year old Esther to complete their family. At first it seems that she is doing everything she can to become part of the family; even learning sign language so she can talk to her new sister Max. The only person who doesn't get along with her is brother, Daniel; although it appears that he is the one being unreasonable not her. Things start to go wrong when Esther is bullied at school because of her old fashioned dress sense and soon after one of her tormentors is injured in what Esther claims was just an accident. It soon becomes clear that Esther isn't the innocent she first appeared when she actually kills somebody then blackmails Max into keeping quiet. Kate starts to suspect Esther is a malevolent presence in the house but her husband can't see it and the children are too frightened to say what they know; this leads people to believe that Kate is the one who is losing her sanity. She continues to investigate Esther's origins but by the time she learns the shocking truth it may be too late to save her family.
This was a good enough shocker although I think it would have been better if it hadn't been made clear how bad Esther was so early on so the viewer would have to decide whether she was bad or whether Kate was indeed going insane. Twelve-year old Isabelle Fuhrman did a fantastic job as Esther making her believable as she switched from friendly to malicious in the blink of an eye. The film wasn't too scary although it did contain a few decent jump scenes; the most shocking scene wasn't one where anybody was in danger but when Esther makes herself up and tries to seduce her adoptive father. This scene was handled well managing to be quite disturbing without even coming close to being offensive as could have easily been the case. The finale was rather cliché but for the most part it was a fairly taut chiller. There was a good surprise revelation near the end but I won't spoil it here; I'll just say that I didn't see it coming!