Orphan
Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, CCH Pounder, Jimmy Bennett, Aryana Engineer
| Studio: Warner Bros. Year: 2009 Rating: R Film Length: 123 minutes Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish Release Date: October 27, 2009 |
The Film ***½
In Orphan, we first meet the Coleman family, consisting of mother Kate (Farmiga), father John (Sarsgaard), son Daniel (Bennett), and daughter Max (Engineer) after Kate has undergone a traumatic stillbirth in her efforts to have her third child. Scarred by the experience, the emotionally fragile Kate takes quite some time to recover. When John and Kate subsequently decide to adopt a child, they visit an orphanage run by Sister Abigail (Pounder). John immediately connects with an orphan named Esther (Fuhrman), a precocious artistic loner who eschews modern children's clothing and always wears ribbons around her neck and arms. Kate and John decide to adopt Esther, and while it initially looks like she will be an easy fit into their family, disturbing incidents start to occur whenever Esther feels threatened. These incidents become escalatingly dangerous and close to home, sowing discord within the family and causing John to question Kate's sanity when she starts to link young Esther to the wave of misfortune they are experiencing.I have to admit that my expectations were lowered a bit when I saw that Orphan was a product of the Dark Castle Entertainment production company which has been responsible for some pretty awful modern horror films in the last ten years or so. This was compounded by the fact that one of those stinkers was 2005's House of Wax which was directed by Jaume Collet-Serra who is also responsible for this film. I am happy to report that my lowered expectations were exceeded greatly by Orphan, which proved to be disturbingly creepy rather than just disturbingly bad.
Rather than just create another horror film where a large ensemble cast is introduced and then sequentially dispatched via some high concept boogeyman, Collet-Serra's film brings the murder and mayhem to the place where Alfred Hitchcock has stated it belongs: the family home. Collet-Serra's approach to the material is decidedly old-fashioned, which means the viewer will be subjected to at least as many fake scares as real ones, all of them punctuated by a massive "stinger" applied by John Ottman's score. Watching this film has made me realize that that kind of thing only really makes me snicker when the movie is not working for some other reason. Audiences for genre movies have certain expectations that need to be met (or cleverly subverted if the filmmakers want to go "postmodern"). The traditional approach taken for Orphan works because the story works and the actors involved give strong performances that elevate the material. The reliance on overly familiar horror "gags" may prevent it from achieving greatness, but it certainly does not keep it from being an enjoyable genre exercise.
With respect to the story, the less said about how it plays out the better, but it avoids the most common horror movie pitfall of insulting the intelligence of its audience. Does this mean the plot makes perfectly logical sense? Well, no. Viewed in retrospect, one will be able to identify holes in the plot logic that would prevent such events playing out in the real world, but within the vaguely dreamlike (or is that nightmarish) world created by the filmmakers, it works extremely well. By effectively rooting the horror elements into a depiction of family life with which many viewers will be able to identify, it has a psychological heft that lingers with the viewer even if they later dismiss it as unrealistic
A big part of why the film works is the unusually strong cast top-lined by Farmiga, Saarsgard, and young Isabelle Fuhrman. In lesser hands, Farmiga's character would have come across as little more than a series of cliches considering all of the baggage she is saddled with by the screenplay. Kate suffers from alcoholism, depression requiring medication, guilt from an accident that nearly killed her youngest daughter, and professional frustration compounded by being a professor of music whose daughter is deaf and son shows no interest in learning about it. Farmiga wisely underplays these "piled on" character quirks. Saarsgard remarkably manages to create a hint of sympathy for his character as the movie progresses even though he is required to behave in an escalatingly oblivious manner as he is manipulated by his adopted child into believing that his wife is responsible for any number of horrible "accidents". Fuhrman gives an outstanding juvenile performance as the creepy orphan at the film's center. She spends much of the film speaking in a bland Russian-accented "Stepford Child" monotone which effectively throws into relief the periodic revealing moments when Esther lets her guard down and Fuhrman's performance modulates both in her manner of speaking and physical posture.
The Video ***½
The transfer approximates the film's original theatrical presentation by filling the entire 16:9 enhanced frame. It is an effective conveyance of the film's highly stylized cinematography which is intentionally a bit murky in appearance. Contrast is frequently manipulated, particularly in interiors, with deep shadows and blown out highlights from exterior light sources. Deeply saturated colors are generally eschewed except for certain moments where they appear for effect. All in all, this looks like it was tricky to encode, and the result is usually quite good with only occasional incidents of MPEG artifacts and thin high-contrast edge ringing.The Audio ****
The most important characteristic of the English Dolby Digital 5.1 track is its dynamic range as a lot of dynamic headroom is saved for the various scare "stingers" of both the real and fake variety. The mix is otherwise moderately dimensional with the surrounds used primarily for score and light ambiance. Fidelity is generally quite good despite the track being encoded at a relatively low 384 kbps bitrate. French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 dubs are also available.The Extras **
When the disc is first played, the viewer is greeted with the following set of skippable promos. All are presented in 4:3 video, letterboxed when appropriate, with Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo sound unless otherwise indicated below:- Warner Blu-Ray Promo (16;( enhanced video - 1:43)
- Batman: Arkham Asylum Video Game Trailer (1:55)
- The Hills Run Red DTV Trailer (1:24)
- The Box Theatrical Trailer
- Anti-Smoking PSA parodying bungee jumping soft-drink ads (1:02)
- PSA promoting adoption that reminds the viewer that Orphan is "just a movie" (:52)
The only proper extra is a group of deleted scenes that are run together as a single reel with chapter stops, but no way of selecting them separately from the disc's menu. Descriptons follow:
- Some goofing around by Esther and her new family at the dinner table(:20)
- A scene at a grocery store check-out where Esther sows seeds of suspicion in Kate's mind that Daniel is considering an affair with a neighbor. (:49) This whole idea was sufficiently conveyed by a line of dialog in the finished film.
- Esther hides some evidence in a homeless man's grocery cart (:27) This provides a suspense beat as Esther hides from the man, but it would not have had much of a pay-off in the finished film
- Daniel asks his father about Esther using the tree house. (:56) This partially helps to establish why John does not believe Esther is responsible for certain activities in the film, but it also raises questions about the logistics of how Esther is accessing things that are better left unasked lest the viewer question their plausibility.
- Alternate Ending with Esther singing "Glory of Love" while putting her make-up on before going downstairs to meet the police. (1:11) It's interesting, but they picked the right ending for the movie proper
Packaging
The single sided dual layered DVD-9 disc comes in a standard Amaray-sized "Ecolite" case with no interior inserts. Menus are straightforward due to the presence of only a single special feature.Summary ***½
Orphan is a stylish and effectively creepy horror movie with an unusually talented cast. An over-reliance on certain horror movie cliches (fake scares with stingers, children singing happy standards in a creepy way, people shockingly appearing in bathroom mirrors when they are shut, etc.) causes it to fall short of greatness, but the family setting and a few novel twists provide an entertainingly creepy genre exercise for those inclined to enjoy such a thing. It is presented on DVD with a decent video rendering of the highly stylized, intentionally murky cinematography, and a solid 5.1 audio presentation with a wide dynamic range for all of the expected "gotcha" moments. The only special feature is a collection of brief deleted scenes including a mildly interesting alternate ending.
