Jaume Collet-Serra’s exhilarating horror-thriller eschews the chin-stroking of early bad seed B-movies – nobody shows up with pipe and corduroys to explain the modern science of genetics – but retains enough classicism to stand out as an exemplar of the sub-genre.
Orphan displays a canny understanding of the grammar required. Rosemary’s Baby informs the overture, a sickly dream sequence that soon squelches into gyne-horror and a tragic back story for Vera Farmiga’s mommy-in-peril. Grieving for a stillborn baby, she and husband Peter Sarsgaard decide to complete their family by adopting an older child, Esther, a mysterious and prissy Russian orphan with an accent inspired by Cold War drama and vampire myth.
Esther quickly finds an ally in her younger, hearing impaired sister but, needless to say, there are bonding issues – the tiny fibs, the eccentric customs, the murder spree.
If we were to devise a league table of evil Midwich Cuckoos – a noble lineage of diabolical kids ranked from Mervyn Le Roy’s Patty McCormack to the murderous Oedipal tribe in Children of the Corn – Isabelle Fuhman’s pint sized villainess would still feature somewhere near the top.
She is aided and abetted by two of the best actors in contemporary American cinema, including Ms. Farmiga, who has already had a dry run for her role in the tremendous, but little seen, Joshua (aka The Devil’s Child.)
The most startling aspect of this endearingly twisted film, however, is the direction. How can this slick, shocking, superbly entertaining pot-boiler be the work of the same guy who brought the Paris Hilton vehicle House Of Wax screaming into the world? Consider us converted, sir.