Orphan is a 2009 psychological horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by David Leslie Johnson from a story by Alex Mace. The film stars Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, C. C. H. Pounder and Jimmy Bennett. The plot centers on a couple who, after the death of their unborn child, adopt a mysterious 9-year-old girl. The film is an international co-production between the United States, Canada, Germany and France. It was produced by Joel Silver and Susan Downey of Dark Castle Entertainment, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran of Appian Way Productions.
Orphan was released theatrically in the United States on July 24, 2009 by Warner Bros. Pictures. Some critics compared Fuhrman's performance as Esther to that of Linda Blair in The Exorcist and Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed.
Video Orphan (2009 film)
Plot
Kate and John Coleman's marriage is strained after their third child, Jessica, was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is also recovering from alcoholism. They decide to adopt a 9-year-old Russian girl, Esther, from the local orphanage. While Kate and John's 5-year-old deaf-mute daughter Maxine or "Max" embraces Esther almost immediately, their 12-year-old son Daniel is less welcoming, being rude and insulting towards the peculiar Esther and refusing to treat her like a sister.
Kate begins to develop a strong mother-daughter bond with Esther too. She decides to teach piano lessons to her and starts to reconcile with John again. One night, John and Kate reflect on their lives since adopting Esther, and happily proceed to have intercourse, as Kate hopes to become pregnant and have another baby in their new extended family. However, their moment is spoiled when Esther suddenly walks in on them. Kate soon becomes suspicious when Esther expresses far more knowledge of sex than expected of a child her age. John says she may have learned it from her previous foster family and to not think about it too much. Esther starts to develop other strange behaviors, such as smashing and killing an injured pigeon with a rock to "put it out of its misery" after Daniel hit it with his paintball gun. When Esther seriously injures school bully Brenda at a local park, Kate initially believes it was an accident. Daniel starts an argument at dinner claiming that Esther is an embarrassment to him and John locks Danny's treehouse as punishment. Kate becomes alarmed when Sister Abigail, the head of the orphanage, visits, warning bad things frequently happen in Esther's vicinity. Esther overhears the conversation and uses Max as a distraction. She pushes Max onto the road into Sister Abigail's path, causing her to almost hit Max and swerve off the road. When Sister Abigail approaches Max, Esther kills Sister Abigail with a hammer and has Max help her push her body into a ditch. Esther then hides the hammer and her bloody clothes in Daniel's treehouse. Danny spots Esther coming out of his treehouse and becomes suspicious. During the night, Esther approaches Daniel in bed with a box cutter and asks him if he saw anything and then threatens to cut off his penis if he says anything to his parents. Terrified, Daniel claims he didn't see anything and Esther exits his room, leaving him traumatized and caused him to urinate himself in his bed. Kate is convinced that something is wrong with Esther but John does not believe her. After Esther is allowed by John to stay home from school and the dentist, John suggests she should do something nice for Kate. Esther then presents Kate with a bouquet of white roses from Jessica's grave. Frantic, Kate yells at Esther and grabs her by the arm for cutting the roses.
Later that night, Esther purposely breaks her arm with a vise and cries to John that her arm still hurts from when Kate grabbed her. After returning home from the hospital, John kicks Kate from their bedroom due to Esther's request for safety. Kate then buys two bottles of wine but refrains from drinking. The next day at school, Esther releases the brakes in Kate's car, causes it to roll into oncoming traffic with Max inside. Esther points out the wine to John, who tells Kate to attend rehab or he will divorce her and leave with the kids. Kate finds Esther's hidden Bible and discovers that it came from the Saarne Institute in Estonia. She contacts the institute to ask about Esther and learns that it is a mental hospital. She then calls the orphanage to ask about Esther's background in Estonia but was informed that her adoption papers were all from Russia. Kate later learns that the Russian orphanage that Esther was originally from never had any records of her at all.
When Daniel learns about Sister Abigail's death from Max, he plans to retrieve the hammer and prove Esther's guilt. Esther overhears their conversation and confronts Daniel as he searches the treehouse, setting it on fire and locking Daniel inside. Daniel falls to the ground trying to escape and is knocked unconscious. Esther attempts to kill him before Max stops her. While Daniel is hospitalized, Esther tries to smother him, but doctors quickly revive him. Kate realizes this and attacks Esther, screaming, but orderlies help John to restrain her. As John takes Esther and Max home, doctors sedate Kate.
That night, Esther, wearing a strapless black dress and heavy dark makeup, tries to seduce a drunken John, who finally believes Kate and threatens to send Esther back to the orphanage. Meanwhile, as Kate is coming out of sedation, she receives a call from Doctor Värava at the Saarne Institute, who reveals that Esther is not a 9-year-old child at all. She is actually a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer from Estonia. She has hypopituitarism, a condition that stunted her physical growth and caused proportional dwarfism, and has spent most of her life posing as a little girl. Värava tells Kate that Leena is extremely violent with a severe mental illness and has murdered at least seven people, including a family who adopted her in Estonia; after the father rejected her sexual advances, she killed the whole family and burned their house down in revenge. Leena was later put into a straight jacket, restraining her and leaving scars on her wrists and neck when she tried to break free from it. Leena had concealed these scars by tying ribbons over them as part of her "Esther" disguise. The doctor concluded that Leena had vanished from the institute a year earlier and hasn't been seen since.
Meanwhile, Leena flies into a violent rage after being spurned by John and ransacks her room. She removes her makeup, false teeth, and body wrappings, revealing wrinkles and dark spots on her face, badly decayed adult teeth, and a fully mature body. After Leena shuts the power in the whole house, John discovers Leena's paintings in her bedroom, which, when exposed to the black light from her fish tank, show hidden scenes of pornography and gore. Max witnesses Leena stabbing John to death and hides. Kate calls the police and rushes home to find John dead. Leena gets a gun from John's safe and shoots Kate in the arm, then goes searching for Max, finding her in the greenhouse. While Leena shoots at Max, Kate crawls onto the greenhouse roof, breaks through the glass above Leena, and lands on her, knocking her out. Kate takes the gun and leaves the greenhouse with Max.
Leena regains consciousness and finds Kate and Max outside near a frozen pond. Leena lunges at Kate, knocking the gun out of Kate's hand and hurling them both onto the ice. Max watches from a hill above, picks up the gun and tries to shoot Leena, but shatters the ice instead, causing Kate and Leena to drop into the water. After a brief struggle, Kate climbs partially out of the pond with Leena clinging to her legs. Leena, hiding a knife behind her back and reverting to her little-girl persona, begs Kate not to let her die, calling her "mommy." Kate angrily responds that she is not her mother and viciously kicks Leena in the face, breaking her neck and letting her sink into the pond. Max and Kate are met by the police moments after.
Maps Orphan (2009 film)
Cast
Production
Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard were cast in main roles in late November 2007. Principal photography for the film took place in Canada, in the cities of St. Thomas, Toronto, Port Hope, and Montreal.
Release
Orphan had its world premiere in Westwood, Los Angeles on July 21, 2009. The following day, it screened at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Canada. The film was released theatrically in North America on July 24, 2009. It was then released in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2009 by Optimum Releasing.
Home media
Orphan was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 27, 2009 in the United States by Warner Home Video and in the United Kingdom on November 27, 2009 by Optimum Releasing. The DVD includes deleted scenes, and one alternate ending. The opening previews also contain a public service announcement describing the plight of unadopted children in the United States and encouraging domestic adoption.
Reception
Box office
The film opened in the 4th spot at the box office, making a total of $12,770,000, behind G-Force, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and The Ugly Truth. The film has since grossed a total of $78,337,373.
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 55% approval rating based on 148 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5/10. The site's consensus reads, "While it has moments of dark humor and the requisite scares, Orphan fails to build on its interesting premise and degenerates into a formulaic, sleazy horror/thriller." The film also earned a 42 out of 100 rating on Metacritic, based on 25 reviews, indicating "mixed to average reviews".
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Orphan 3.5 stars out of 4, writing: "You want a good horror film about a child from hell, you got one." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle also gave a positive review, commenting: "Orphan provides everything you might expect in a psycho-child thriller, but with such excess and exuberance that it still has the power to surprise." Todd McCarthy of Variety was less impressed, writing: "Teasingly enjoyable rubbish through the first hour, Orphan becomes genuine trash during its protracted second half." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote: "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, noting: "Orphan isn't scary - it's garish and plodding." Keith Phipps from The A.V. Club wrote: "If director Jaume Collet-Serra set out to make a parody of horror film clichés, he succeeded brilliantly." Although the film received mixed reviews, Fuhrman's performance was lauded and positively received.
Accolades
Controversy
The film's content, depicting a murderous adoptee, was not well received by adoption groups. The controversy caused filmmakers to change a line in one of their trailers from: "It must be difficult to love an adopted child as much as your own," to:"I don't think Mommy likes me very much." Melissa Fay Greene of The Daily Beast commented: "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." There is a pro-adoption service message on the DVD, advising viewers to consider adoption.
See also
- Fictional portrayals of psychopaths
- List of films featuring the deaf and hard of hearing
References
External links
- Orphan on IMDb
- Orphan at Box Office Mojo
- Orphan at Rotten Tomatoes
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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