Flick Picks 13: Orphan

This poster is the scariest thing about this film.

Hello there, Streakers! Boog here, first with an apology. My keyboard has been acting funny for days now, and last week I figured out why: it was dying. Having been quietly laid to rest, I am now chugging along with a newer, faster, stronger keyboard than ever before. Nonetheless, I should have been better with my time this week, and posted on time. For that, I am sorry. Now, fellow streakers I bring you the thirteenth Flick Pick, 2009's small scale thriller Orphan. I should note, for our readers, that the trailer linked here, and the movie itself, does seem to demonize adoptive children, so for those sensitive about that subject, you might not want to read this. SPOILERS, guys, SPOILERS. As for the film itself, well 13 is now my unlucky number. This film is well shot, well edited, had some good music... and the most cliche-ridden, formulaic plot I have seen in a thriller like this. Seriously, a monkey trained to write bad plots could probably top the one seen here. First off, we get a blur filter sequence involving a hospital, and a miscarriage, where we meet the main characters, Kate and John, played by Vera Farmiga and Peter Saarsgard. Farmiga can also be seen in 2006's The Departed, and Saarsgard in another horrible thriller, Skeleton Key. We learn that they are a married couple, who have two children, and the miscarriage was the expected third. Also, a disturbingly unnecessary shot involving a LOT of blood. This, it turns out, is a nightmare experienced by Kate, who is experiencing anxiety about the prospect of adopting a child. They don't ever establish how long ago the miscarriage was, so this makes both parents seem a little heartless and stupid. They try to establish that this couple loves each other very much, by having them try to have spontaneous sex while their children are home. This isn't as stupid as it sounds, as I'll explain.

Hey, I think the girl we adopted is evil!!!!

You see, of Kate and John's two surviving children, the youngest, their daughter Max, thanks to a birth defect, is almost completely deaf. I will note here that the child who played Max, Aryana Engineer, did what the script and plot gave her, which was mostly to be innocently adorable. This is the only film she has been in to date, and she actually has the same hearing deficit her character here does. The oldest child, their son Danny, played by Jimmy Bennett, is stupid. I mean, really stupid. The plot gives him nothing to do except be a douchebag, and when it does give him a moment to be a hero, the plot tries to kill him. Twice. So not much going on with him. Bennett may be memorable to those who have memorized J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek reboot, as he played Kirk as a child. However, here he just doesn't do anything, and kinda comes off as a tacked on character. Well, having established the family unit, and the basic plot of the adoption, we jump almost headfirst into the orphanage, run by Sister Abigail, here played by CCH Pounder, one of the more talented female TV and film character actors of her generation. Here, she gets about ten minutes, playing a one dimensional vague exposition font before the plot predictably and impossibly beats her and throws her dead body in a ditch. But I'm getting ahead of myself. When they get to the orphanage, they are throwing a party, a kind of meet and greet where prospective parents can see all the children, and how they interact in a group setting, without having to interview each child individually. John inexplicably goes away from the party, alone, and finds a girl alone singing to herself while she paints. The movie glosses over the apparently voyeuristic tendencies of John however, as we are introduced to the villain of this piece, 9 year old Esther, played Isabelle Fuhrman. This is her second film, the other being a 2007 Dakota Fanning vehicle called Hounddog. Here she is exactly what that movie calls for.

But...I play the piano. See? Not Evil. I swear.

Unfortunately, what the movie calls for a one-dimensionally evil girl, whose only reason for not being immediately caught and locked away, is that all of the bad things that happen around her, have vague circumstances. So, of course, she goes undetected as a psychopath for years. After the adoption, is where the film, for me anyway, becomes a retread/ripoff of a much better movie, The Good Son, starring Maculay Culkin and Elijah Wood. Now, don't get me wrong, The Good Son, being a thriller set and shot in the early 90s, is extremely cheesy, and cliched. The difference lies in the villain. The Good Son has Henry Evans, played by Culkin, who throughout most of the film, is disturbing, creepy, and chilling, mainly due to the fact that Culkin doesn't have a very large emotional range. It works to the film's advantage however, by having Henry as a cold, emotionless thing, something that comes off as less than human, and therefore sinister and predatory. Orphan, by contrast, has Esther, who you can tell from the time she sets foot into the house is EBIL.... and she never grows beyond that. You know right away she's evil, so none of the evil things she does are a surprise, and that's about it. She does get 2 genuinely creepy moments, but both are ruined by the plot's absurd need to force Esther to repeatedly use similar vocal tones and actions, so that by the time the film is over you can predict her every word and line.

She plays the piano? Not evil! Crazy wife....

As we get our Good Son retread, one child gets hurt, a pigeon dies, CCH Pounder dies, Danny's murder is attempted, twice, and Peter Saarsgard gets knifed repeatedly, dying in the climax of the film. This is where I will now go into the technical aspects of the film, as most of them were great, unfortunately. The film's director, Jaume Collet-Serra, does well, other than plot. The film is shot beautifully, but that's hampered a little bit by the 9 jump scares and 6 fake outs that the film wants to shove at you. One thing I noticed about how the film was shot, to give you an example: once Esther is introduced, every scene that she appears in, or is relevant to, in shot that she appears either in between the parents, or close enough in perspective to the camera to be replacing Vera Farmiga's character in the shot. This of course gives the plot away if you're paying attention, but it says a lot of Collet-Serra's style and dedication that he shot all the scenes that way. Visually, therefore, the film is great, as the scenes are shot well, and convey what they are supposed to as far as story.

Dad, I'm deaf, and even I can tell you that she's evil.

Musically, The film only decent, as we get far too many music cues denoting evil and jump scares about to happen, and the film given to Esther to occasionally sing to be creepy, isn't. The dialogue, for the most part, isn't much better, 60% of it is Super Melodramatic Ham, now 45% more cheese and sap! The other 40% is Vague Plot Points, combined with Overly Critical Character Dismissal, and sprinkled with some Twist Ending That Wasn't Nearly a Big Enough Payoff. That they probably bought of M.Night, he was between terrible films that year, he had some extra. And by twist, I do mean probably the only original thing in the movie. But it's also the thing I have the biggest issue with. You see, they reveal during the climax that Esther is not a 9 year old girl, as she has been this whole film. Instead she is a 33 year old with a glandular disorder that causes proportional dwarfism. That by itself isn't bad, it's the fact that the movie uses this fact to make the entire focus of the movie that Esther, who looks to be 9 years old(and was played by a then 11 year old actress, she's 14 now), wants to have sex with John, her adoptive father. In fact, she tries to when John gets drunk, and when he refuses(but not before sadly confessing how 'lost he feels' thanks to the plot deciding that this seduction should appear to work a little bit), That's when she goes off the deep end and kills him. And her seemingly random need for physical affection is just that: random, as this is just sprung on us, and is never given an explanation.

Yep, okay, fine, I'm evil. Happy now?

So yeah, in closing, avoid this movie, as other than the admittedly well done visuals and visual style, this film has nothing to offer anyone. As someone who has watched this twice now, once in a stupor unable to believe that I wasn't watching The Good Son, I can assure you that this film is bad, and please, this time, leave the Orphan alone.