Totally Unbelievable

Rating: 3/10 (23 May 2011)

*Contains big spoilers*
Where to start.
Psychological horrors rely on believable characters. Peter Sarsgaard on the other hand was one of the most unbelievable characters from a film I've seen in a long time. It wasn't his fault but his character was a moron, pure and simple.
After everything that had happened around Esther, and there was an awful lot, he still sided with her over his other children and wife. For somebody who was an architect how he could not put two and two together is beyond me, and for all his stupidity deserved to die. For those that liked The Orphan I really don't know how one could look past this, he was that unbelievably.
Their two children baffled me as well. Perhaps they were scared, but after everything that they knew and saw at least one of them would have mentioned something, but The Orphan would have fallen at the first hurdle had they done so.
The seduction scene. Esther turned out to be a 30-something in the film however Isabelle Fuhrman wasn't. I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but I thought this scene was totally unnecessary and the film could have ended up in exactly the same place without the additional plot that she murders her foster families once the father spurns her sexual advances.
Credit should be given to Vera Farmiga, I thought she did put in quite a good performance and was one of the very few positives that came from the film.
To it's credit the twist in the film was one of the more clever twists I've seen for a while although once it was revealed the rest of the film was very predictable, but it certainly wasn't the worst ending I've seen.
The stupidity of the father was bad enough but the whole adoption process was by far the worst part of this film. I don't know much about how it works but I'm pretty sure they would carry out backgrounds checks on a child before a family adopts her rather than after. The Sister only seemed to make a few phone calls to find out that there has been a lot of violence surrounding Esther, and only a little more research from the mother uncovered that she escaped from a mental institution in Estonia. For a film that needs to be believable it makes a total mockery of itself.
Another issue I had with Orphan was it's pacing. At times it seemed to really drag out and I on occasions found myself having to resist giving up watching it, but on the grand scheme of things this didn't change my opinion of the film that greatly.
I've been very critical of Orphan but the framework for a good film is there. A lot could have been done with the story but it felt like they had the initial idea and the twist planned out and just made up the rest as they went along to get from A to B. Totally unbelievable characters and too many large holes in the plot ruin Orphan in which there could have been a good film hiding.
It's not all bad but it's definitely not good. 3/10.