Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, CCH Pounder, Jimmy Bennett, Margo Martindale, Karel Roden, Aryana Engineer, Rosemary Dunsmore, Jamie Young, Lorry Ayers, Brandan Wall, Genelle Williams
Cert: 15
Region: B
Length: 123mins
Video: AVC, 1080p, 1.85:1
Audio: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Stereo LPCM 2.0
Languages: English
Subtitles: English (HOH)
Number of Discs: 1

A mixture of recent British horror The Children and American classic The Omen, Orphan may play its psycho-thriller card early on but it's bolstered by a decent third act reveal and universally excellent performances by each of the child actors. We'll even go so far as to say 12 year-old Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays troubled orphan Esther, fully deserved an Oscar nod for a role that required her to learn the piano, paint pictures, speak in an utterly convincing Russian accent and commit murderous acts that make Mickey and Mallory Knox look sedate. (Ironically it would be Fuhrman's co-star Vera Farmiga who would get the Best Supporting Actress nomination for Up In The Air).

Cute little girl.

After an unpleasant and fairly unnecessary nightmare of a birthing sequence, director Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax) finds the right gear and introduces us to wealthy couple Kate and John Coleman (Farmiga and Sarsgaard). Kate, having recently suffered a miscarriage as a result of a drinking problem, decides to adopt a child to add to their existing family, made up of son Daniel and deaf daughter Maxine. Whilst visiting the local orphanage run by Sister Abigail they take an instant shine to Esther, a 9 year-old foreign girl who's as intelligent as she is gifted with a paint brush. At first Esther seems like the perfect daughter but when other kids at school start picking on her, they become the victims of nasty accidents (a simple scene of a little girl playing on a jungle gym becomes quite unnerving once we know Esther is lurking nearby waiting to strike).

Kate slowly grows suspicious and starts digging into Esther's past despite protestations from husband John who thinks she's just overreacting (Sarsgaard's lack of common sense is the film's weakest point). Their other kids soon cotton on too; Daniel is threatened with castration if he tells on his new big sis (ouch) while little Max is made an unwilling accomplice in the gruesome roadside murder of tattle-tale Sister Abigail. By playing on universal parental fears regarding 'the bad seed' and the rather more erroneous 'foreigner amongst us' effect (why is Esther Russian exactly?), Orphan strikes a double whammy in the psychological stakes whilst the various murders committed by Esther fulfill all the thriller requirements. Both elements are orchestrated better than we've seen them done since a wave of home invasion films in the 90's (Pacific Heights, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Single White Female). Orphan is a very good genre thriller, then, but its strength is also its weakness.

You know what you're getting going in and - the revealing of Esther's big secret aside - the film ultimately descends into the usual cliches like characters fighting to get a gun that's just out reach or surviving several gory injuries; any one of which would have killed a normal person. The funny thing is we'd complain just as much if these conventions weren't present, so ingrained are they in our expectations (after Die Hard every killer has to come back at least once for that final blood-thirsty lunge. Them's the rules). Orphan succeeds as a good thriller mostly because the actors play it utterly straight, giving the characters a believability that other films might feel at odds with due to the amount of weirdness involved. Farmiga largely side-steps the cliched paranoid mother role, making Kate a troubled but still highly intelligent person while newcomer Isabelle Fuhrman makes Dakota Fanning look like Jake frickin' Lloyd. So give Orphan a try - you might be pleasantly surprised by it.

Film: 73%