I liked it, but I don't know why

Rating: 7/10 (19 December 2011)

So a couple adopts a young girl and she turns out to be a psycho. I am not about to delve into the plot, but I will highlight my thoughts on this film.
I'll start with the good. Above all, this film works because it is different. In probably the most predictable and lackluster genres these days, Orphan definitely stands out, purely because it is different. Now that is not to say that it doesn't have clichés, as it is full of them. But the idea of having the killer being part of your family is something new that I really appreciated. Next, I thought the performance by Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays the killer orphan, Esther, to be fantastic. I was taken aback by how she nailed everything from the believability right down to the accent. I also loved Aryana Engineer, who plays the sister, Max. Now this may be because she is just so adorable, but I'm fine with it either way.
Now, for the bad. The twist. The over-hyped ridiculously outrageous twist. Was it original? Yes. Did I like it? No. Twist endings for me almost always make or break the film. Thankfully, however bad the twist was, it did not break this film. But come on. I am not going to give the twist away, but let's just say it made no sense at all. I feel that twist endings should be used for films that can be watched and understood differently on multiple viewings. For example, Fight Club, the Sixth Sense, and Shutter Island would be some films with twist endings that really work. After knowing the twist ending in Orphan, it makes the film seem really stupid. Alright, besides the twist, the dialog was poor and unrealistic in quite a few scenes. The jump scare scenes were pretty bad as well, especially considering half of them were fake jump scenes.
So the film was far from perfect, but I still enjoyed it for some reason. Hopefully this will be the start of some good new horror scripts coming out soon. Probably not, but we can always hope.