October 28
#25 Orphan (2009)

One has to begrudgingly admire Dark Castle Films, which, since 1999, has been consistently producing moderately-budgeted, slickly-produced, perfectly respectable horror films, none of them all that great by any means.  The original purpose of the company was to remake the films of William Castle, the legendary gimmickeer of 1950’s horror (The Tingler); but after 1999’s House on Haunted Hill and 2001’s Thirteen Ghosts, the company wisely decided to seek out more original material.  Orphan, mind you, is hardly original.  The idea of killer kids has been around since at least 1956’s The Bad Seed, which featured a murderous child played by Patty McCormack, and which spawned a number of imitators over the decades.  (I remember suffering through 1993’s The Good Son, with Macaulay Culkin, on a plane flight to Orlando, and being not terribly bothered that the plane’s rumble drowned out most of the dialogue.)  The Omen, The Children (1980 and now 2008), Children of the Corn (1984 and 2009)…I could give or take these movies, although I have a soft spot for the glowing-eyed, blond-haired tots of the original Village of the Damned.   The taboo appeal is obvious: see little kids commit horrible acts!  But the better entries usually offer something a little more to sustain interest: the occult mystery in The Omen, the sci-fi elements of Damned.  Or, perhaps, the acting and an aura of class, which is really what sets Orphan apart, although most will remember it for a late-act, “I can’t believe they just went there” twist.

Vera Farmiga (The Departed) and Peter Sarsgaard (Kinsey) play Kate and John Coleman, parents of two children, one a young girl who is mostly deaf, the other a preteen boy; a third, Jessica, was killed in a tragic accident, the details of which are unveiled over the course of the film, and a rose-decorated shrine to her memory sits outside their home. The opening scenes are the best in the film, as we see a believable portrait of family life, from casual warmth to ordinary tensions; there’s a simple and perfectly lovely sequence in which Kate signs to her daughter from a children’s book designed to help children cope with death. All of this is carefully set to a natural domestic rhythm, and it’s refreshing that genre elements don’t kick in until three-quarters of an hour have passed; undoubtedly this is why the gory shocker prologue (a silly dream sequence which has nothing to do with the tone of the rest of the film) was added. Kate and John decide to adopt, and find a Russian girl who is remarkably intelligent and creative. Their first impression is that they’ll have a gifted child – though with this comes, at first, seemingly minor signs of defiance or precociousness: she insists on wearing her antiquated, doll-like dresses, and wishes to violate a Coleman family rule by locking the door when she goes into the bathroom (the mother is nothing if not overprotective of her children, following the accidental death of Jessica). And slowly she begins to confront and manipulate the family in bizarre ways, for a purpose that is not at first clear, except that perhaps she, too, has seen The Bad Seed.

When Orphan gets going, it settles so securely into those well-worn subgenre ruts that one merely looks to see how well the vehicle drives.  In that respect, Orphan passes muster, just barely, and mainly thanks to young Isabelle Fuhrman, who gives a jarringly mature performance as Esther, one that can sell her steely-menace lines.  When she prepares to squash her brother’s head under a rock in the same manner that she earlier flattened a pigeon, you can believe that she doesn’t see much of a difference.  It’s both thrilling and gloriously absurd how decisively and openly Esther acts without getting caught; if this film were another half-hour longer, I expect she would be marching through town square with a flamethrower torching kids while the police and her parents just happen to be looking the other way.

Ever since The Sixth Sense, it seems all Hollywood genre films require a twist ending, no matter how much M. Night has devalued the idea in the intervening years. Nobody likes a twist that betrays the viewer’s trust. Ideally, a twist ending should enrich what one has previously seen, not trash it. Thankfully, Orphan’s twist–and it’s a biggie–allows you to reevaluate everything you’ve seen without necessarily voiding any established emotional connections or through-lines. But it also threatens to move the whole enterprise into the realm of camp (which fans of this subgenre usually embrace anyway). The twist does make sense, in a cracked sort of way, and it genuinely earns the “horror” label for what it manages to imply. (Or maybe just the “ick” label?) In that respect, I would almost recommend Orphan–almost. The climax is so rote that it’s dull: a chase, a little bit of gruesomeness, all vanilla-flavored. Just when the imagination seems to be kicking in, we get a sleepwalking screenwriter. How much more interesting it might have been if the film used the twist to finally tell us a completely different story than the one we were expecting going in? But then, this is a Dark Castle film, and that was a buzzer under your seat, my friend, not the Tingler.