Orphan (film)

Orphan
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jaume Collet-Serra
Produced by	Joel Silver Susan Downey Leonardo DiCaprio Jennifer Davisson Killoran
Screenplay by	David Leslie Johnson
Story by	Alex Mace
Starring	Vera Farmiga Peter Sarsgaard Isabelle Fuhrman CCH Pounder Jimmy Bennett
Music by	John Ottman
Cinematography	Jeff Cutter
Editing by	Timothy Alverson
Studio	Dark Castle Entertainment Appian Way Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros. (US/Int'l) Optimum Releasing (UK) StudioCanal (France) Village Roadshow (Australia)
Release date(s)	July 24, 2009 (2009-07-24)
Running time	123 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English American Sign Language Estonian
Box office	$78,337,373[1]

Orphan is a 2009 psychological thriller directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. The film centers on a couple who, after the death of their unborn child, adopt a mysterious 9-year old girl. Orphan was produced by Joel Silver and Susan Downey of Dark Castle Entertainment and Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran of Appian Way Productions.^[2] The film was released theatrically in the United States on July 24, 2009.^[3] The film received mixed critical reviews but Fuhrman's performance as Esther was acclaimed.

Plot

Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) and her husband John (Peter Sarsgaard) are experiencing strains in their marriage after their third child was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is also recovering from alcoholism. The couple decides to adopt a 9-year-old Russian girl, Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), from the local orphanage. While Kate and John's deaf-mute daughter Max (Aryana Engineer) embraces Esther almost immediately, their son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is less welcoming.

Kate becomes suspicious that there might be problems in Esther's background when Esther expresses far more knowledge of sex than expected of a child her age. Her suspicions deepen when Esther seriously injures another girl at a local park. While she initially believes Esther's claim that it was an accident, Kate is further alarmed when Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder), the head of the orphanage, warns her and John that bad things always seem to happen when Esther is around. Esther overhears this and, as Sister Abigail is leaving in her car, Esther pushes Max into its path, forcing her to swerve off the road. Sister Abigail rushes to see if Max is hurt, but Esther kills her with a hammer, then convinces Max to help her hide the weapon in their treehouse. Kate is convinced that something is very wrong with Esther, but John does not believe her. Attempting to find out more about Esther, Kate finds the girl's hidden Bible and discovers that it came from the Saarne Institute in Estonia, which she eventually learns is a mental hospital. She e-mails a picture of Esther to them and asks for more information.

When Daniel learns about Sister Abigail's death from Max, he tells her of his plan to retrieve the hammer to prove Esther's guilt. However, Esther overhears their conversation and confronts Daniel as he searches the treehouse, setting it ablaze and locking Daniel inside in an attempt to kill him and destroy the evidence. Daniel falls to the ground trying to escape, and is knocked unconscious. Esther attempts to finish him off with a rock, but Max stops her. While Daniel is hospitalized from his fall, Esther slips into his room and smothers him with a pillow, stopping his heart, but doctors quickly revive him. Kate, realizing what happened, attacks Esther, but orderlies help John restrain her. As John takes Esther and Max home, doctors sedate Kate.

That night, Esther tries to seduce a drunken John, who finally believes Kate was right and threatens to send Esther back to the orphanage. Meanwhile, as Kate is coming out of sedation, she receives a call from a doctor at the Saarne Institute, who reveals that Esther is actually a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer. She has hypopituitarism, a condition that stunted her physical growth, and has spent most of her life posing as a little girl. The doctor tells Kate that Leena is extremely violent and has murdered at least seven people, and that she bears scars on her neck and wrists, which Esther always kept covered, received while trying to escape her strait jacket. Among her victims were a family that adopted her in Estonia, whom she killed because the father rejected her sexual advances.

Leena flies into a rage after being spurned by John, and ransacks her room. Then, after removing the makeup, false teeth, and body wrappings that enhanced her illusion as youthful "Esther", Leena kills him with a knife. Max witnesses this, and hides. Kate, unable to get John on the phone, rushes home and finds him 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. As Max watches from a hill above, she picks up the gun and tries to shoot Leena, but hits and 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 desperately 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. Kate angrily responds that she is not her mother, and kicks Leena in the face, breaking her neck and sending her sinking back into the pond. Max and Kate are met by the police moments after.

Cast

• Vera Farmiga as Kate Coleman
• Peter Sarsgaard as John Coleman
• Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther Coleman/Leena Klammer
• CCH Pounder as Sister Abigail
• Jimmy Bennett as Daniel Coleman
• Margo Martindale as Dr. Browning
• Karel Roden as Dr. Varava
• Aryana Engineer as Max Coleman

Production

The real life Alma College in St. Thomas, Ontario in Canada, which served as the Saarne Institute in the movie.

The film was shot in Canada, in the cities of Burlington, Toronto, Port Hope and Montreal.^[2]

Release

Box office

The film opened at #4 film in the box office for its opening weekend, making $12,770,000 total, behind G-Force, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Ugly Truth. The film has grossed a total of $78,337,373.^[4]

Home media

Orphan was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 27, 2009 in the US by Warner Home Video. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on November 27 by Optimum Releasing. The home media include alternate scenes and footage, and one alternate ending marketed on the DVD cover. The opening previews also contain a PSA describing the plight of unadopted children in the USA and encouraging domestic adoption.

Alternate ending

In an alternate ending, Esther is seen hurrying into her room. There, she is shown with a face covered in blood while she re-applies her makeup. She then puts on the dress she wore for her first day of school and greets the police, who arrived after receiving Kate's frantic call before she reached the house, at the top of the stairs by curtseying and introducing herself, and then she is seen descending the stairs into the crowd of police. It is not explained whether or not she has killed Kate or Max in the alternate ending, although the dead body of John can be seen. However, due to the excess blood on Esther's face in the alternate ending and the fact that she is not wet, it is a possibility that she killed both Max and Kate.

Response

Critical reception

Critical reaction to Orphan has been mixed, with the film earning a rating of 55% (43% among the Top Critics) on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus is: "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".^[5] It also earned a 42 out of 100 on Metacritic.^[6] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Orphan 3½ stars out of 4, writing: "You want a good horror film about a child from hell, you got one."^[7] Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle also gave a positive review, saying: "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."^[8]

Todd McCarthy of Variety, was less impressed, writing: "Teasingly enjoyable rubbish through the first hour, Orphan becomes genuine trash during its protracted second half."^[9] 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."^[10] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D+ score, saying, "Orphan isn't scary — it's garish and plodding."^[11]

Overtly negative reviews are abundant: from "galling, distasteful trash" (Eric D. Snider)^[12] to "old-fashioned and trashy horror flick" (Emanuel Levy)^[13] and "relentlessly bad", albeit "entertaining" (Rob Vaux).^[14] According to Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' World Movie Reviews, "The problem with Orphan isn't merely that the film is idiotic--it's that it's also sleazy, formulaic and repellant."^[15] And 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."^[16]

Although the film received mixed reviews, Fuhrman's performance was acclaimed and positively received; Emanuel Levy writes Fuhrman "acquits herself with a strong performance, affecting a rather convincing Russian accent and executing sheer evil with an admirable degree of calm and earnestness."^[13] Todd McCarthy proclaims that Fuhrman (as well as fellow juvenile cast members Aryana Engineer and Jimmy Bennett) are terrific and that Fuhrman "makes Esther calmly beyond reproach even when faced with monumental evidence against her, and has the requisite great evil eye."^[9] Mick LaSalle continues in that Fuhrman "steals the show" and that she "injects nuance into this portrayal, as well as an arch spirit."^[8] Roger Ebert determined she "is not going to be convincing as a nice child for a long, long time."^[7]

Controversy

The film's content, depicting a murderous adoptee, was not well received by the adoption community.^[17] 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."^[18] 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."^[19]

Possibly in response to these concerns, there is a pro-adoption service message on the DVD, advising viewers to consider adoption.^[20]

Awards and nominations

Award	Year	Category	Result	Cast/crew
Teen Choice Awards	2009	Choice Summer Movie: Drama	Nominated
Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film	2010	International Feature Length Competition	Golden Raven

See also

• The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
• Fictional portrayals of psychopaths
• Mikey, another film about a homicidal child, in this case, an actual child

References

1. ^ Movie Orphan - Box Office Data, News, Cast Information - The Numbers
2. ^ ^{a b} Diane Garrett, Tatiana Siegel (2007-11-29). "Sarsgaard, Farmiga join 'Orphan'". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117976774.html?categoryid=13&cs=1. Retrieved 2008-05-29. 
3. ^ Orphan (2009) - Release Dates
4. ^ Orphan at the-numbers.com
5. ^ Orphan at Rotten Tomatoes
6. ^ Orphan reviews at Metacritic.com
7. ^ ^{a b} Orphan at rogerebert.com
8. ^ ^{a b} Review: Orphan, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 July 2009.
9. ^ ^{a b} McCarthy, Todd. Orphan Review, Variety
10. ^ "Movie Review - Orphan - New Kid in the House, Clearly Up to Something", The New York Times, 24 July 2009.
11. ^ Orphan | Movie Review, Entertainment Weekly.
12. ^ Eric Snider's review
13. ^ ^{a b} Emanuel Levy's review
14. ^ Rob Vaux's review
15. ^ Review by Dennis Schwarz
16. ^ Review by Keith Phipps
17. ^ "Adoption groups angry with 'Orphan' stereotypes". The San Francisco Chronicle. 2009-07-17. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/16/MV1N18L5U1.DTL. 
18. ^ Fortune Care celebrates 26th year with bloodletting activity
19. ^ Greene, Melissa Fay. "The New Movie Parents Hate", The Daily Beast, 15 July 2009.
20. ^ http://www.google.com/search?q=orphn+controversy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=RqO&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=X&ei=REuvTqDsAuX30gHC6fTfAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CBcQvwUoAQ&q=orphan+controversy+DVD&spell=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=250116ba2d339486&biw=1271&bih=690

External links

• Official website
• Orphan at the Internet Movie Database
• Orphan at Box Office Mojo
• Orphan at Rotten Tomatoes
• Orphan trailer on YouTube
• Portman, Jamie. Audiences Scream for Isabelle Fuhrman's Orphan, Montreal Gazette, July 20, 2009