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Orphan is a 2009 psychological horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard and Isabelle Fuhrman. The film centered on a couple who adopted a child after their unborn child's death. Orphan was produced by Joel Silver and Susan Downey of Dark Castle Entertainment and Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran of Appian Way Productions. The film was released theatrically in the United States on July 24, 2009.

A prequel, titled Orphan: First Kill, will be released in 2022, with Fuhrman reprising her role.

Plot[]

The movie begins with our main couple, Kate and John Coleman, entering a hospital. Kate is in labor with the couple’s third child until a bloody wheelchair ride denotes the worst thing possible. It turns out that this glossy experience is a nightmare that Kate’s been having ever since the stillbirth of their would-be third child, who they were going to name Jessica. The traumatic event led to a period of alcoholism for Kate, and although she’s been sober lately, she still lost her job teaching music at Yale. However, John provides good income as an architect so that they can afford to live in a gorgeous home in Hamden, Connecticut.

The Colemans have two biological children: a 12-year-old boy named Daniel and a 5-year-old girl named Max, who is partially deaf and can read lips. At first, Kate and John seem like a happy, loving couple; they even try to make love in the kitchen. However, later on, we see that their lust is just a band-aid over deeper-set issues. Jessica’s stillbirth weighs heavily on the family - Max even has a children’s book to help her understand.

The next day, the couple makes a snowy drive out to St. Mariana’s Home for Girls, an orphanage headed by Sister Abigail, who leads them inside as someone watches from the attic. While Kate observes some children rambunctiously playing with a man in a hideous clown mask, John wanders up to the second floor to admire orphan artwork. He’s lured into a classroom by the sound of singing, and discovers its source is a female orphan named Esther. Kate catches up with her husband, who’s been admiring Esther’s art, and their immediate connection with the orphan is noticed by Sister Abigail.

Later, in private with Kate and John, Sister Abigail explains that Esther is originally from Russia. The family that brought her to the US died in a mysterious house fire. (Later found out to be arson) Despite that, Esther’s been relatively well-adjusted. Sister Abigail says that The only problem they had with Esther is when they tried to take off her ribbons around her wrists and neck. The couple decides to adopt Esther, and three weeks later, she goes home with them to meet her new family. She quickly bonds with Max through sign language, but Daniel treats her coldly due to no longer being the center of attention.

A few days later, while paint-balling in the woods, Daniel decides to stop shooting soldiers and start shooting messengers. He quickly regrets his decision; Esther shows up with Max in tow and turns this into a teachable moment. Daniel refuses, so Esther asserts her dominance and does the deed for him, a strange reaction for a little girl to have. While cleaning Esther’s room, Kate finds an old Bible in Esther’s sock drawer with a picture of a man inside.

At school the next day, Daniel bullies Esther by knocking the same Bible out of her arms, and Brenda appears, a girl who’s been bullying Esther since day one. Brenda continues to pester Esther by turning her Bible into confetti, but goes too far when she tries to take off the neck ribbon, which causes Esther to go ballistic. Esther calms down in time for a piano lesson with Kate, something she expressed interest in when she first arrived. When Kate tries to bring up Esther’s issues at school, Esther changes the subject by asking about baby Jessica, who’s name she learned from Max. In response, Kate shows her Jessica’s memorial in their greenhouse.

Later, John takes the girls on a playground outing, where he is hit on by his neighbor Joyce; despite this, John remains faithful and deflects her advances. After this, John leaves Esther alone to go smoke, giving her the opportunity to slip away. Esther then stalks a lone Brenda, eventually pushing Brenda from the top of the playscape, breaking her ankle upon impact. Max witnesses everything, but refuses to sell out her sister at the dinner table. Daniel’s clearly had enough of Esther and calls her the r-word, which earns him the punishment of being locked out of his treehouse, meaning he can’t get to his pornographic magazine or Fear Street costume.

Things are going smoothly for Esther until they receive an unconventional visit from Sister Abigail; Kate had called her about the playground incident, so Sister Abigail did a little digging. Apparently a boy at her last school “accidentally” fell on some scissors, and the house fire that killed the family that brought her to the US involved foul play. An eavesdropping Esther runs upstairs to recruit Max; Esther is a master manipulator and Max is a perfect first mark. She’s young and trusting, and Esther exploits her disability by pretending she cares through ASL. Esther employs her skills to commit a heist, which yields a nutcracker and John’s keys to the office safe, inside of which is a gun. Esther asks Max to participate in a game of Russian Roulette, and when that fails, Esther decides that they’ll do it later.

Sister Abigail leaves, and the girls wait for her car by a bridge near their house. Esther commands Max to wave down the nun, saying they’ll only scare her. When Max hesitates, Esther shoves her in front of the sister’s speeding car; luckily, Sister Abigail narrowly avoids Max, but when she gets out to see what happened, she is met with a hammer to the side of her face by Esther. Abigail is still for a second, but her apparent death is just an act. Esther eventually gets back and kills Abigail by bludgeoning her to death with the hammer. Esther hides the bloody clothes and hammer in the treehouse, and threatens Max to keep her mouth shut. She spots Daniel watching them as they walk back to the house, and later that night in his bedroom, she interrogates him about what he saw, threatening to castrate him if he tells Kate and John.

Esther’s behavior lands her an appointment with Dr. Browning, Kate’s therapist, whom she talks to about her struggles with sobriety. Esther has gotten Dr. Browning to buy into her schemes, and she now believes that Esther’s behavioral problems stem from Kate. John sides with Esther and Dr. Browning, and refuses to listen to his wife. He leaves her outside as she gets a call from Sister Judith, another nun at St. Mariana’s Home for Girls. Judith is in a panic spiral, since Sister Abigail never made it back to the orphanage. Later, a police search of the surrounding woods turns up her body. Kate follows up with a pointed Internet search, but her misgivings about Esther further alienate her from John.

John invites Esther to paint in his office with him, where she not-so-subtly casts shade on Kate’s parenting. John suggests Esther do something nice for Kate, so Esther Esther rips out the flowers from Jessica's grave and gives them to Kate as a bouquet. Incensed by Esther ruining her memorial to Jessica, Kate roughly grabs Esther's arm in distress, asserting that she did this on purpose. This gives Esther an opening for more crywolfery, and that night, Esther sneaks into the toolshed; using a vice grip, she breaks her own arm. The broken bone is blamed on Kate, and John banishes her to the couch. With the fate of her family up in the air, a stressed-out Kate is driven back to the bottle. Instead of imbibing, though, she steadies herself and empties one of them down the drain.

The next morning at school, while Kate is helping Daniel with some books that have fallen out of his suspiciously sliced-open bag, Esther sneakily releases the parking brake. The family car dangerously zooms down the parking lot, and while a snow bank cushions Max from any serious injury, it’s the last straw for John, who once again blames Kate; he calls over Dr. Browning for an intervention against his wife. Kate tells them that she wasn’t drunk while dropping off the kids, but her pleas are ignored by John, who calls her manipulative; he gives her a week to go to rehab, and says he’ll take the kids away if she doesn’t.

Kate tries to get ahead and sneak away with the kids that night, but she’s stopped by Esther, who finally drops the friendly facade. She reveals that she’s read Kate’s journal, and relays the details of the pond accident. Unfortunately, Kate’s hands are still tied due to the threat of child protective services. The next day, Kate sneaks into Esther’s room to dig up some dirt. A better look at her Bible reveals an inscription in the back: The Saarne Institute. She calls their number to ask about Esther, assuming it’s her previous orphanage. It is not.

Sick of how much this is no ordinary family anymore, Daniel confronts Max about Sister Abigail’s death. Some incriminating crayon drawings indicate that the evidence is hidden in his treehouse. When Daniel goes to investigate, he finds Esther waiting for him  with a bottle of lighter fluid. She sets both the evidence and the treehouse ablaze, then padlocks the door again, trapping the young boy inside. Daniel is forced to escape outside where the flames threaten to engulf him, and after jumping on a wooden beam, he quickly falls to the ground and is knocked out cold. Esther attempts to kill him, but Max intervenes, stalling her long enough for Kate to come and reach them.

Daniel is taken to the hospital, where he’s in critical condition but still alive — much to Esther’s chagrin. Kate begs John to open his eyes about Esther as the orphan slips away to take care of Daniel once and for all. She smothers him with a pillow while wearing his heart rate monitor, which avoids detection and shows how calm she is while murdering people. Upon seeing her son nearly killed, Kate marches up to Esther and bitch slaps her; the violent outburst causes Kate to be restrained and sedated by the staff. Kate is forced to spend the night at the hospital while her family goes home without her.

John tucks the girls into bed before cracking into the other bottle of wine, unaware that Esther is giving herself a very adult makeover with Kate’s clothes and makeup. Esther then goes downstairs and shows off her new look to John, all dressed in black. Esther takes advantage of her father’s drunken state to get close to him. Esther’s attempts to seduce John is too much for him, and he threatens to send her back to the orphanage after belatedly beginning to see the behavior that Kate had tried to tell him about which hinted at her unsavory past.

Back at the hospital, Kate is awoken by a call from Dr. Värava of the Saarne Instituute —who recognizes the photo that Kate had sent him. Kate learns that Esther is actually a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer, an escaped patient from Estonia. She has hypopituitarism, a rare hormonal disorder that stunted her physical growth and caused proportional dwarfism, and she has spent most of her life posing as a little girl, explaining her world-weary wisdom and attraction to John. With nothing left to lose, Leena sheds her disguise, removing her prosthetic childlike teeth, revealing hideously rotted, discolored real teeth and unwrapping a taped down chest. She also removes her ribbons, which were hiding the scars she got at the institute from thrashing around in a straitjacket.

As Kate rushes home to warn her family, John hears a commotion and checks on Esther. He finds her missing and her room demolished, with a blacklight mural left behind. He turns off the light and as he fixes to walk out of the room, eerie glowing images catch his eye, showing graphic, obscene images of men and women engaging in explicit sexual activities. Stunned, he now fully realizes that Kate had been right about Esther. Suddenly, the house’s power goes out, and when John takes a flashlight upstairs to investigate, he is stabbed in the side by Leena. In a painful ordeal, Leena excessively stabs John to death.

Noticing that Max has witnessed the crime, Leena goes to get her gun, right as Kate crashes her car through the front of the house. Kate discovers John’s body, immediately knowing that Leena had caused his death. Kate searches for Max but doesn’t find her —   instead, she finds a bullet in her shoulder thanks to Leena, who shoots her through an upstairs window. Kate ties a tourniquet and escapes out to the roof, where she sees Max cornered in the greenhouse by Leena, who is opening fire on her. Kate then breaks through the greenhouse roof and knocks Leena unconscious.

With the threat seemingly neutralized, Max and an injured Kate leave to meet the cops approaching the house, but Leena attacks Kate near the same frozen pond where Max nearly drowned, hurling them onto the ice. Leena gets some licks in, so Max grabs the gun to provide support, but shatters the ice instead, plunging both Leena and Kate into the freezing pond.

After a brief struggle, Kate emerges victorious and starts to drag herself out. Her progress is impeded by Leena, who is clinging to her legs as Kate climbs out. Leena reverts to her Esther persona, begging "Mommy" not to let her die, while hiding a knife behind her back. Kate retorts angrily that she is not Leena's mother, and with a swift kick, sends Leena down into the icy depths of the pond, breaking her neck. Leena's body sinks into the dark pond as Kate and Max are met by the police.

Cast[]

  • Vera Farmiga as Katherine "Kate" Coleman.
  • Peter Sarsgaard as John Coleman.
  • Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther Coleman/Leena Klammer.
  • C. C. H. Pounder as Sister Abigail.
  • Jimmy Bennett as Daniel Coleman.
  • Aryana Engineer as Maxine "Max" Coleman.
  • Margo Martindale as Dr. Browning.
  • Karel Roden as Dr. Värava.
  • Rosemary Dunsmore as Grandma Barbara.
  • Genelle Williams as Sister Judith.

Production[]

The film was mostly shot in Canada in the cities of Toronto, Port Hope and Montreal. Also, some portions of the film are shot in the American state of Connecticut. A hint of this was the vehicle's license plate throughout the movie.

"The movie Orphan comes directly from this unexamined place in popular culture. Esther’s shadowy past includes Eastern Europe; she appears normal and sweet, but quickly turns violent and cruel, especially toward her mother. These are clichés. This is the baggage with which we saddle abandoned, orphaned, or disabled children given a fresh start at family life."
Esther Coleman

Reception[]

The critical reaction to Orphan was mixed with the film earning a rating of 56% (43% among the Top Critics) on Rotten Tomatoes where the consensus was: "While it had moments of dark humor and the requisite scares, Orphan failed to build on it's interesting premise and degenerated into a formulaic, sleazy horror/thriller". It also earned a 42 out of 100 on Metacritic. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Orphan 3½ stars out of 4, writing: "You wanted a good horror film about a child who was from Hell. You got one." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle also gave a positive review, saying: "Orphan provided everything that you might expect in a psycho-child thriller, but with such excess and exuberance that it still had the power to surprise."

Todd McCarthy of Variety was less impressed by writing: "Teasingly enjoyable rubbish through the first hour, Orphan became genuine trash during it's protracted second half." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, "The actors have to eat like the rest of us, if evidently not as much, but you still have to wonder how the independent film mainstays Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard ended up wading through Orphan and, for the most part, not laughing." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D+ score, saying, "Orphan was not scary. It was garish and plodding."

Openly (And at times vehemently) negative reviews are abundant: From "Galling and distasteful trash" (Eric D. Snider) to "Old-fashioned and trashy horror flick" (Emanuel Levy) and "Relentlessly bad" and "Entertaining" (Rob Vaux). According to Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' World Movie Reviews, "The problem with Orphan was not merely that the film was idiotic. It was that it was also sleazy, formulaic and repellant." According to Keith Phipps from The A.V. Club, "If Director Jaume Collet-Serra set out to make a parody of horror-film clichés, he succeeded brilliantly."

Although the film received mixed reviews, Isabelle Fuhrman's performance was acclaimed and positively received. Emanuel Levy said about Fuhrman "Acquitted herself with a strong performance, affecting a rather convincing Russian accent and executing sheer evil with an admirable degree of calm and earnestness." Todd McCarthy proclaimed that Fuhrman (As well as Bennett and Engineer) was terrific and she "Made Esther calmly beyond reproach even when faced with monumental evidence against her and had the requisite great evil eye." Mick LaSalle continued in that Fuhrman "Stole the show" and she "Injected nuance into this portrayal as well as an arch spirit." As it was said by Roger Ebert, she "Was not going to be convincing as a nice child for a long time."

The film was the #4 film at the box office for it's opening weekend, making $12.77 million total behind G-Force, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Ugly Truth respectively. As of September 9, 2009, the film grossed a total of $47,886,036.

References[]

External links[]


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