Orphan

Orphan is one of those films that’s a good 90-minute movie stretched out over two hours. It takes a lot of guts to make a rather OTT psychological horror flick that’s 122 minutes long, and there’s little doubt the film could have done with a few nips and tucks to ensure it doesn’t outstay its welcome, but even so it’s pretty entertaining.

Orphan leaps into the evil child horror subgenre with its tale of a couple, Kate and John, who try to overcome having a stillborn child by adopting a 9-year-old Russian girl called Esther to join their other two kids. At first the newcomer seems sweet if rather too knowing, but after a series of accidents and near disasters occur, Esther’s new mum starts to wonder whether underneath the pigtails and sweetness lurks something far darker and more deadly. However hubby thinks Kate is overreacting and can’t see any problem with the adoptive moppet.

In some respects it’s a bit of an odd film, which seems to be trying to be both a highbrow psychological thriller and a low-rent horror flick at the same time. The script leads us down some dark alleyways of a family struck by tragedy and a tormented past, with an excellent cast (Peter Sarsgard and Vera Farminga) that suggests this is going to be a deep psychological thriller.

Particularly in the early stages there’s some pretty well executed melodrama, but the characters and themes the film sets up get lost about halfway through and instead it becomes a series of horror set-pieces designed to put your nerves on edge as Esther manipulates all those around her and goes about her creepy business, getting rid of anyone who stands in her way. But what is it that she actually wants?

It all leads up to a plot twist of the type that you’ll either love or loathe, and despite plenty of decent scenes of kids in peril (to manipulate your empathy glands that little bit more, Kate and John’s youngest child is also deaf and mute), your ultimate enjoyment of the movie is likely to rest on how you respond to the twist. The turn the movie takes is pretty silly, but at the same time it’s oddly satisfying just because it took a lot of balls for the filmmakers to go with it and after an hour and a half of trying to work out whether this is trying to deep and meaningful or not, it finally underlines that Orphan is here for trashy fun, and it certainly succeeds at that.

A couple words of warning though, despite the 15 certificate there are some pretty strong murder scenes, and if you object to films that put children in danger, you’ll really hate this. The film goes a lot further than most comparable movies in unashamedly manipulating the audience by putting young people in sustained peril. These scenes are made even more intense by the fact that the child actors are uniformly excellent. Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther performs her role with incredibly creepy self-possession, while Jimmy Bennett and Aryana Engineer as the family’s other kids are also superb.

As long as you ignore Orphan’s initial pretensions to be something a bit more than just generic horror fun, with a silly but enjoyable twist and plenty of nerve-jangling set-pieces, it’s not a bad film at all. It may be way too long, but it’s still pretty entertaining.

Overall Verdict: Although the family melodrama disappears under a wave of slightly clichéd creepy kid horror staples, Orphan is an entertaining if pretty daft and overlong ride.

Reviewer: Phil Caine