Orphan (2009) – Review

Does being spoiled on a twist actually effect your enjoyment of a film? Some say no and that the overall experience can still be wonderful even if you go into it pre-warned of dome of the more unpredictable movements of the plot; but others tend to think that if you take the secret sauce out of proceedings, you could end up with a much blander cinematic sandwich. As I’m more in the latter camp, it’s probably the main reason I’ve taken so long to catch up with Jaume Collet-Serra’s bizarre psycho-thriller, Orphan as I accidently discovered its main twist only weeks after it came out.
Now be warned, I will be discussing said twist later in the review (how could I not?), so if you haven’t seen Orphan and you are still blissfully ignorant about its secrets, maybe go do something about it before it’s spoiled for you too – because I’m fairly certain my belated first viewing would have been a far different experience if I’d been ignorant to it’s outlandish secrets.

Nothing strains a marriage quite like a child dying during pregnancy, but after their third child passes during childbirth, Kate and John Coleman are clinging on to their relationship by their fingertips. While John had an affair in the wake of the tragedy, Kate sunk into alcoholism which almost caused one of their other kids to drown while she was in a boozy stupor, but in an attempt to bring some love and hope back into their family, the Colemans decide to adopt from St. Mariana’s Home For Girls.
In virtually no time at all, John has bonded with Esther, a nine year-old Orphan from Russia who not only can paint, but also seems to be incredibly eloquent despite being rather distant from the other girls. In fact, Sister Abigail seems a little alarmed at first, but when Kate and John bring the new member of the family home, their deaf five year-old, Max, loves the idea of having a sister while the older Daniel is understandably jealous.
Of course, anyone who has seen a psycho thriller before fully knows that Esther’s something of a bad seed and she’s barely settled before she sinks her manipulative hooks into the family in order to bend them to her spiteful will. When she isn’t snapping the legs of spiteful brats on the playground, she’s trying to turn Kate and John against one another for her own twisted purposes and soon she’s also roped both Coleman children into her nefarious schemes.
It isn’t long before we discover that Esther isn’t above commiting murder in order to get what she wants, but while Kate is beginning to get on to her, the troublesome tyke has gaslit her husband so much that the cracks in their relationship are just too wide for him to believe her. However, with her bloody goal in sight, no one can possibly be ready for the unbelievably twisted secret that Esther carries within her…

After going crazy with Dark Castle’s House Of Wax remake that’s still predominantly famous for killing Paris Hilton, there’s a brief moment where you feel that Jaume Collet-Serra has reigned himself in a bit when turning his attentions to the slightly more subtle realms of the psycho thriller. After all, what is Orphan if not a continuation of the themes of 90s thrillers such as Single White Female, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and The Good Son which sees vulnerable people find that they’ve invited pure, undiluted crazy into their home, and for the most part, Orphan follows the established pattern like a dutiful child. While Collet-Serra plays a little rough in the opening moments as it deals with Kate’s truly harrowing stillbirth with gruesome ruthlessness, he soon settles into the usual groove, laying out familiar family beats as the Colemans continue to struggle in the aftermath of their loss.
Of course, it doesn’t take long for Isabelle Fuhrman’s calculating Esther to come along and from here, we soon take a trip to all the usual, scenic sights on the psycho thriller tour. First the little shit starts small, pushing her boundaries and planting seeds that will soon grow into choking vines of distrust and while fans of the genre has seen it all before, Collet-Serra gives matters a particularly spiteful edge (at one point Esther threatens Daniel into silence with castration!) and Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard are on hand to go all in the well-meaning couple who spectacularly implode thanks to the influence of their adopted daughter. In fact, Sarsgaard plays his role of a wife-doubting husband so well, you physically have to restrain yourself to scream at him every time he takes Esther’s side over his own wife and in return, Farmiga seems to be trying to make her role as traumatic as possible as she’s gaslit into oblivion.

However, while matters may feel a little predictable, all bets are quickly off once we discover Esther’s actual secret and it’s probably here that you should take a hike if the twist of Orphan has somehow evaded you. If bashing in the head of CCH Pounder’s nun and repeatedly attempting to put the Coleman children in the hospital (or morgue) wasn’t enough, Orphan manages to flip the script when it’s revealed that Esther isn’t actually a nine year-old Russian orphan at all, but instead is a 33 year-old Estonian lunatic with hypopituitarism who wears ribbons to cover the scars from straining against her straitjacket from her time in an asylum. For here, things understandably get pretty fucked up. Not only has Esther (real name Leena) been keeping a record of her sordid plans in plain sight on the walls of her bedroom thanks to ink that’s memorably revealed with a black light in the film’s creepiest moment, but to make things extra uncomfortable, she’s got romantic intentions for John which takes an already outlandish twist and jacks it all the way up to eleven.
However, while such a shock succeeds in making Orphan stand out from the crowd, it’s arguably done so at the expense of the rest of the film. If you don’t know the twist, Orphan is a pretty standard example of the genre right down to the 90s gloss that Collet-Serra manages to replicate. Leading you in with a hint of predictably and a smidge of unoriginality, it’s then free to bludgeon you around the head with that reveal that’s impossible to recover from until long after the credits have rolled. However, if you do know the twist, Orphan loses a large portion of its power as you’re just sitting there waiting for the plot to pull the trigger and if I had managed to see it blind, I genuinely couldn’t predict what I’d rate such an audacious story wrinkle.

The killer child flick gets a funky, black lit update that mostly sacrifices originality in order to go all in on one of the most freakish twists of the decade. However, while the cast and director do well to keep things percolating before the movie springs it on us, Orphan tends to play the hits a bit too much before delivering a helpful warning: believe women… unless they’re lunatics pretending to be a nine year-old girl. But surely that’s just common sense, right?
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