A couple who have two children (a daughter who is deaf) decide in order to move on after the loss of their third child, that they will adopt a child. They go to an orphanage and are won over by foreign Esther, so they take her in and it isn’t long before things start happening and Esther is not as innocent as she seems.
Ah the good ol’ evil child horror film, there is something about them isn’t there? Because they are a child and are doing evil things, it just ends up being scary? Well I didn’t find it scary in Orphan, I actually found a lot of this film rather silly. It has a great set up, you get to know the family and they their longing to help give a child a new home. Esther easily wins you over right away, she seems sweet and intelligent but a little old fashioned. Then her strange behaviour kicks in and the evil starts to show, and this is where it gets a little ridiculous.
I felt certain scenes and bits of music where there just to get a rise out of you, they didn’t actually achieve anything and it felt just a bit silly. It seemed far fetched that no one would believe the mother played by Vera Farmiga (Who is really good in the role I might add), and take the side of Esther just because she is a child (played in a very creepy fashion by Isabelle Fuhrman). The husband played by Peter Sarsgaard takes her side no matter what and I thought it seemed just a bit too convenient for the plot to progress to the really silly and over the top third act.
While this film was ridiculous and over the top I actually didn’t mind it, it was paced well for the most part. It had a good amount of character developement as well so you could get to know the family. It has a bit of a twist ending, which I knew what it was coming in but it also meant certain things made sense to me. I didn’t mind the twist, it was something different but I thought what came next was a bit too over the top and it lost me. The film itself is really well acted, and that certainly helped it a lot. They had a really good cast and they certainly didn’t let the film down, it made it better then what it could have been. Over all I felt Orphan was an average horror flick but a decent entry into the evil child genre. Not one I could easily recommend but worth checking out for Vera fans and Peter fans for sure.
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