'Orphan' much better than you think!

Posted on July 28, 2009 - 9:30pm by michael Orphan succeeds surprisingly well at the formidable task of overcoming its own automatic image as just another in a long line of creepy killer kid movies, and there haven’t been a lot of impressive movies coming from that little corner of the movie world. And I don’t mean cool killer kid movies like Halloween, but manufactured thrillers like The Omen or The Good Son. They are generally not without their merits (although also not exactly my favorites), but I have to admit that Orphan (like the other two releases this week, The Ugly Truth and G-Force) is much, much better than I anticipated.

That being said, however, I should also mention that the movie is highly entertaining and ultimately satisfying despite following a formula that is so familiar that the structure of it all feels almost like filling in a coloring book. But like some of the most powerful drama, Orphan is an actor’s film, not a low rent horror thriller driven by cheap scares. There are scares and there are thrills, there’s social drama and even a little comedy, but it's the performances that you will remember, and that is what seems to be making all the difference.

So here are your 100 words of plot – Kate and John Coleman are a young couple who are not so young anymore. They have two children but lost a third in a still-birth, and they are now carefully approaching the emotional turmoil of giving up conceiving another child of their own and adopting instead. They ultimately adopt a 9-year-old Russian girl named Esther who at first seems to be their dream child but who soon begins to act weird amidst an increasing frequency of weird events. Kate suspects something but her past alcoholism damages her credibility even while she watches her happy family disintegrating right before her eyes.
One thing I should say, however, is that one of the things that tends to destroy movies like this is turning the antagonist into your standard movie monster at the end of the film. This is one of the things that all but ruined The Kite Runner, for example, but it is especially damaging for a thriller like Orphan because these movies begin as family dramas but ultimately transform into creepy thrillers and then cheesy horror, leaving you with a muddled impression of a movie that doesn’t really know what it wants to be. I will admit that Orphan doesn’t exactly break that mold, but the rest of the movie is so well written and well performed that it makes it easy for you to forgive the ultimate familiarity.

Most importantly, the two parents are not clichés, but are definite three-dimensional characters and are wonderfully acted by Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. Their own children, Daniel and Max (both astonishing young performances by 13-year-old Jimmy Bennett and the impossibly cute Aryana Engineer), are some of the best child performances I’ve ever seen, especially in combination with the show-stealing performance from Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther. In real life Fuhrman looks like a cute, charming kid, but man, she gives one of the most effectively creepy young performances I’ve seen in quite a few years.

So far there seems to be a bit of a divided reaction to Orphan. There is a possibility that you will either love the movie or hate it, but I would argue that you have to force yourself to dislike it, while you only need a little nudge in the right direction to have a great time. The ending is a bit of a weak spot, and many people will be markedly unimpressed with a crucial plot development in the third act, although I think this particular development is one of the movie’s redeeming values. You’ll know it when you see it, but in the meantime I encourage you to go check it out while it’s still out in theaters. It will provide you with plenty of reasons if you decide you do not want to enjoy it, but they are far outweighed by the strengths.

The Bean Meter



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