Orphan (2009 film)

Orphan
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Jaume Collet-Serra
Written by	Story: Alex Mace Screenplay: David Leslie Johnson
Produced by	Joel Silver Susan Downey Leonardo DiCaprio Jennifer Davisson Killoran
Starring	Vera Farmiga Peter Sarsgaard Jimmy Bennett Isabelle Fuhrman Aryana Engineer CCH Pounder
Cinematography	Jeff Cutter
Edited by	Timothy Alverson
Music by	John Ottman
Production companies	Dark Castle Entertainment Appian Way Productions
Distributed by	USA/International: Warner Bros. UK/Ireland: Optimum Releasing
Release date	July 24, 2009 (2009-07-24)
Running time	123 min.
Country	Template:FilmUS
Languages	English, American Sign Language
Box office	$78,337,373

Orphan is a 2009 American horror/drama/thriller film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, and Isabelle Fuhrman in the title role. 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. The film was released theatrically in the United States on July 24, 2009. The film received mixed critical reviews but Isabelle 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 Kate's third child was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is also recovering from alcoholism. They adopt Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), a 9-year-old Russian girl, 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 grows suspicious when Esther expresses far more knowledge of sex than would be expected of a child her age. She is further alarmed when Sister Abigail (C. C. H. Pounder), the head of the orphanage, comes to their home to warn her and John that when ever Esther is around,bad things seem to happen, which is overheard by Esther. As Sister Abigail is leaving in her car, Esther pushes Max into its path, forcing her to swerve the car off the road. As Sister Abigail rushes over to see if Max is hurt, Esther kills her with a hammer. She convinces Max to help her hide the weapon in their treehouse. Meanwhile, Kate's attempts to tell John about Esther's strange ways fall on deaf ears. Esther plays Kate and John against each other and is even able to turn Kate's psychiatrist against her. Hoping 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 thinks is an orphanage, but later turns out to be a mental hospital. She arranges to send a picture of Esther to them and asks that a doctor call her back with more information.

Daniel learns about the death of Sister Abigail from Max. Esther overhears him detail a plan to retrieve the hammer to prove Esther's guilt. While Daniel searches the treehouse, Esther appears with the hammer, which she drops in front of Daniel. Spraying lighter fluid on it and the floor, she sets the treehouse ablaze. Daniel falls to the ground trying to escape the fire, and is knocked unconscious. Esther tries to kill him 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 John and a couple of orderlies restrain her. As John takes Esther and Max home, doctors sedate Kate and take her to a room in the hospital to calm down.

That night, Esther tries to seduce a drunken John, who finally realizes Kate might have been right about her. He threatens to send her back to the orphanage and she runs crying to her room. Meanwhile, as Kate is coming out of sedation, she receives a call on her cell phone 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 disorder that stunted her physical growth, and has spent most of her life posing as a little girl in order to be adopted. The doctor tells Kate that Leena is extremely dangerous and violent and has killed a number of people in the past, including an entire family that had adopted her previously. She tried to seduce the father, and when he tryed to take her back, she burnt down his house, killing him and his family.

Esther, angry and hurt at being spurned by John, ransacks her room. Then, after removing the makeup, false teeth and body wrappings that enhanced her illusion as youthful Esther, Leena attacks John with a knife. Max sees Leena stabbing her father repeatedly and hides. Kate, unable to get John on the phone, rushes home, only to find John lying dead. Leena fetches a gun from their safe and shoots Kate in the arm before she goes to search for Max, finding her in the greenhouse. While Leena shoots at Max, Kate manages to crawl out onto the greenhouse roof, breaks through the glass above Leena and knocks her out. Kate takes the gun and leaves the greenhouse with Max, thinking Leena is dead.

Leena regains consciousness and finds Kate outside near a frozen pond where she lunges at her, hurling them both onto the ice as Max watches from a hill above. Max picks up the gun that was dropped by Kate during the struggle and shoots at Leena, but breaks the ice instead, causing Kate and Leena to drop into the water. After a brief struggle, Kate climbs out with Leena desperately clinging to her legs. Leena begs Kate not to let her die, calling her "Mommy" while holding a knife behind her back. Kate angrily responds that she's not her mother and kicks her in the face, snapping her neck and sending her back into the water, where she slowly sinks. Max and Kate are met by the police, who arrive moments later.

Cast

• Vera Farmiga - Kate Coleman, the main protagonist of the film.
• Peter Sarsgaard - John Coleman, Kate's husband.
• Isabelle Fuhrman - Esther Coleman/Leena Klammer, the main antagonist of the film.
• C. C. H. Pounder - Sister Abigail, head of the orphanage that Esther came from.
• Jimmy Bennett - Daniel Coleman, Kate and John's son and older child.
• Aryana Engineer - Max Coleman, Kate and John's daughter and younger child, who is deaf and mute.
• Margo Martindale - Dr. Browning, the family doctor.
• Karel Roden - Dr. Varavra, an asylum doctor who reveals Esther's secret.

Production

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

The film was shot in Canada, in the cities of Toronto, Port Hope and Montreal.

Release

Controversy

The film's content, depicting a murderous adopted person, was not well received by the adoption community. 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."

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". 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 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, 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."

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, saying, "Orphan isn't scary — it's garish and plodding."

Openly (and at times vehemently) negative reviews are abundant: from "galling, distasteful trash" (Eric D. Snider) to "old-fashioned and trashy horror flick" (Emanuel Levy) and "relentlessly bad", albeit "entertaining" (Rob Vaux). 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." 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."

Although the film received mixed reviews, Isabelle 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." Todd McCarthy proclaims that Fuhrman (as well as Bennett and Engineer) is terrific and that she "makes Esther calmly beyond reproach even when faced with monumental evidence against her, and has the requisite great evil eye." Mick LaSalle continues in that Fuhrman "steals the show" and that she "injects nuance into this portrayal, as well as an arch spirit." Roger Ebert determined she "is not going to be convincing as a nice child for a long, long time."

The film was the #4 film at the box office for its opening weekend, making $12.77 million total, behind G-Force, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Ugly Truth respectively. The film has grossed a total of $78,337,373.

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

ugg....Kevin Kelly

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.

This movie is rated M or even M.A in some countries.

See also

• Mary Bell
• The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
• Fictional portrayals of psychopaths

External links

• Official website
• Orphan at IMDb
• Orphan at Box Office Mojo
• Orphan trailer on YouTube
• Portman, Jamie. Audiences Scream for Isabelle Fuhrman's Orphan, Montreal Gazette, July 20, 2009