One day a filmmaker is going to truly frighten audiences by making a horror film that’s all foreshadowing and no eventuation – two hours of demonic angles, shifted mirrors revealing smiling adversaries and foreboding strings that never actually reveal anything. As it is, Orphan, an otherwise canny and enjoyable variant of the bed seed genre by Catalan director Jaume Collet-Serra, can barely wait to start tormenting the seemingly settled family unit that hosts the otherworldly titular protagonist.
After the loss of their third child during childbirth, an experience recalled as a nightmarish vision of medical invasiveness and horrific cheeriness that effectively sets the tone of parenthood as a mess of potential dangers, Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard) decide to adopt. On their very first visit to an orphanage they strike up a connection with Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), a preternaturally mature nine-year-old from Eastern Europe who paints, wears ribbons and bows, speaks with a formal cadence and basically sets off alarm bells.
Presupposing that their love and upper middle-class life can cure all, the Coleman’s take Esther in, introducing her to older brother Danny (Jimmy Bennett) and deaf younger sister Max (Aryana Engineer). The movie’s great pleasure is watching Esther destroy this seemingly happy family from the inside. Like Robert De Niro’s Max Cady in the Cape Fear remake, her presence reveals the underlying flaws: Kate is a reformed alcoholic, John has had problems with infidelity (he also belongs to the Hollywood Architects Club, which means that he must work with a drawing board, pencil and triangle, Mike Brady-style).
Orphan is, in a sense, overcast. Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard are too good for these roles. But it does make for some unexpected jolts. Farmiga, whose exemplary work in a handful of little seen independent releases got her the female lead in The Departed, has such deep access to her character that Kate’s emotional travails, workmanlike on the page, have a striking impact, while Sarsgaard’s ability to coolly remove his protagonists from the needs of others makes for an unsettling husband.
They are no match for Esther, who is soon felling schoolyard rivals and then stalking the icy landscape with Max as an unwilling accomplice and a hammer in hand (why winter? Because blood splatters on snow are vividly effective). The film bloodily mocks the American family’s means of response: Esther wraps the family psychiatrist around her little finger, turning her against Kate. The mother, in turn, is soon searching the internet for something to help convince John that his adorable new daughter is a monster; one of her first search terms is 'children who kill", which is technically accurate but a little vague.
Collet-Serra has previous experience working with the undead – his first feature was the Paris Hilton starrer House of Wax in 2005 – and here he effectively turns the family home into a hushed battleground, framing Esther as a pint-sized menace who fells those much larger. Unlike 1993’s The Good Son, where a young Macaulay Culkin stalked Elijah Wood, Orphan focuses on the battle for matriarchal control, with Esther as a threat to Kate. The final act is ludicrously enjoyable, with a yen for violent resolutions, as the story plays out with missed phone calls, sudden bursts of exposition and the requisite twist (it’s a doozy). But it also retains a primal drive throughout: like Sarah Connor, Kate must destroy in order to save those she loves.
