Directed by:
Jaume Collet-SerraScreenplay:
David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrickCinematography:
Jeff CutterComposer:
John OttmanCast:
Isabelle Fuhrman, Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Karel Roden, Aryana Engineer, CCH Pounder, Jimmy Bennett, Margo Martindale, Rosemary Dunsmore (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
An outwardly angelic little girl displays an unforeseen devilish streak upon moving into the home of her new adoptive parents in this shocker starring Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga. In the aftermath of a miscarriage, prospective parents Kate (Farmiga) and John (Sarsgaard) find their lives turned upside down; their marriage is falling apart, and the demons of Kate's past begin manifesting themselves in a series of horrifying nightmares. Deciding that the best means of achieving some semblance of normalcy is to simply adopt, the dejected couple visits a local orphanage. There, they are both drawn to a nine-year-old girl named Esther. But Esther isn't as sweet as first impressions suggest, and almost immediately after welcoming the young child into their home, Kate and John suspect that something is terribly wrong with their adoptive daughter. Kate can see right through Esther's seraphic charm, though her attempts to convince everyone else of the truth go unheeded by her skeptical family and friends. By the time anyone bothers to take Kate seriously, it may be too late to prevent a devastating tragedy from unfolding. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (10)
Such a good idea for a punchline certainly deserves better than this family (non)idyll with a stupidly behaving herd of adults and zero atmosphere. Or if not better, in any case shorter. While the first hour still works great, it gradually starts limping during the last half hour from one dumb cliché to another, in the last ten minutes becoming a parody of all of the worst genre clichés known to man. An unintentional parody, I should add. P.S.: It’s crying out for a Czech remake, we even have a perfect main protagonist (!SPOILER!) already.
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Brilliant, distinctive, in some ways unadorned, and excellently escalated. I look at most of today's psychothrillers/horror films with significant removal, because almost none of them lack sexy female protagonists (future victims), who of course impress with their visual merits, especially in the moments when they stagger in front of the camera in their underwear – usually full of despair and drenched in blood. Orphan works with the concept of culminating terror (both physical and psychological) and is extremely impressive, in some ways even truly chilling atmosphere. The playground scene with the slide is a demonically refined display of creative potential, which (world of wonders!) the director of House of Wax exploits to the hilt. Several (certainly more than three) memorable scenes push this film to the top of the genre in the final reckoning, and I really have to say that it’s been some time since I saw a similarly honest film built primarily on suspense and the viewer's necessary concern for the main characters.
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Jaume Collet-Serra, the loser responsible for the desperately routine House of Wax, is supposed to coach the evil kid, one of those who are now (theoretically) supposed to be popular? I have no idea if he’s been talked out of it since then, or kept sedated in Hollywood, but please keep on making films just like this in the future! Considering the subject matter, the film goes quite outside the established horror practices of recent years, and so we get to watch two hours of PRECISE psychological games that confirm the holy truth that horror is all about the characters. It takes courage today to make the viewer tense by having characters more or less just having a dialogue with each other, but if it gets a little rough every now and then, the scriptwriter is supported by perfect actors. The adults are flawless, and the kids too, but twelve-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman gives me the chills (although according to the photos on IMDb, she’s actually a cute girl). It’s too bad that in the end, Serra didn't have the balls to get rid of the traditional genre vice, the clichéd ending. Whether or not DiCaprio and Silver were properly aware of what they were putting out into the world, I say again: just like this!
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Quite impressive, but at times it’s a mysterious spectacle that is bit too far-fetched, and which, in my opinion, could have had an even worse ending. It is particularly far-fetched in terms of the actions of the parents (or father), the psychologist, the nurse from the orphanage... Essentially, almost everybody except the mother. But the acting of the two central female characters is very good, and the direction, including Ottman's reliable music, is also very good. And it's definitely a bonus that I almost didn't realize that it had a two-hour runtime.
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My goodness, that was quite nerve-wrecking! And it starts so easygoing (if we don’t count the first scene, that is), an idyll with smart little Esther and her likeable parents and siblings; I almost didn’t want to believe anything could go wrong. And it does! In the course of half an hour, Esther turns from a cute girl into the kind of bitch you want to murder with a pickaxe between the eyes, and the psycho-terror begins. Among other things, I liked how the film builds tension – there are several times when the director gives the impression that there’s a about to be jump-scare, a chilling scene or a twist, but he rarely delivers them, which does great service to keeping and increasing the attention of the viewer. For someone like Jaume Collet-Serra, who’s made the average House of Wax, this kind of mature psychological horror is a massive surprise and a great promise for the future.
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