Orphan

In the midst of my jet lag induced tiredness, I decided to take the adventure down to the cinema to see a good film, and we (Adam, Sarah, Ffion and I) chose to see Orphan. And the result, one of the best horrors I've seen in a long time. Well, since Drag Me To Hell. The only horror to top Drag Me To Hell in my opinion - so far - is 30 Days Of Night, which I'm annoyed to discover the second installment of the trilogy will be going straight to DVD. Anyway, back to the review.

The story, as you could probably guess, is about an orphan named Esther, who gets adopted by the husband and wife duo of John and Kate after losing out on their baby. She seems perfect for them, she's polite and gets on with her adoptive parents' youngest (but not so much their oldest), Max. And she likes to be different, until unpleasant things start to happen, all revolving around Esther.

The films scariness comes from the dread you feel whenever you see Esther in a scene. Esther takes Max under her wing, by simply threatening her with death unless Max does what Esther says, which gets immediately irritating for the audience at how this 9 year old, Esther, can force a child as young as Max, who I guess to be around 5 years old, not to tell anyone what Esther's doing, forcing a number of audience members to groan in frustration as Max lies to her parents in fear of what would happen if she tells. One of the main strong points of the film is how much Esther angries the audience into hating this monster of a child.

Isabelle Fuhrman, Esther, played the demonic psycho-child brilliantly, as I said earlier, causing the audience to absolutely despise her, me included, and some actually cheering and clapping when Kate hits Esther near the end of the film. But, I must question the director for one scene in the film, Jaune Collette-Saume, for making an 11 year old actress try and seduce a grown, maybe 40 year old man, her adoptive father. That scene was insanely creepy and disturbing, but Fuhrman, has balls to do that.

Sadly though, only the kids are the other quality actors in the film, with John (Peter Saarsgard) annoyingly oblivious to the obvious insanity surrounding Esther and he's a sex freak, taking to having sex with Kate over the island in their kitchen and Kate (Vera Farmiga) is not a very strong lead actress, and generally being annoying.

Unfortunately, the film hasn't been reviewed very highly, with it only receiving 2 stars from 5 by Empire, but I will be much more generous and give it 6.9/10. A genuinely entertaining horror, recommended to everyone who likes horror films.