What a lackluster summer for movies.
Star Trek was great entertainment, but so many films haven't delivered based on my expectations. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Angels & Demons, and X-Men: Origins just to name a few. (To be fair, I highly enjoyed Star Trek, Up, and The Proposal, and I have yet to see The Hangover).Summer has begun to wind down, and so has the crop of the widely-hyped summer movie blockbusters. Orphan, released on July 24 to little fanfare and mostly middling reviews, is a genre film that opened at No. 4 at the box office, and dropped to No. 6 the following weekend. The box office returns are respectable, and I have noted at least two solid reviews. Add one more ... quite simply, Orphan could be the best horror/suspense film of 2009 (keep in mind I have not seen Drag Me to Hell, but I will once it is released on DVD).
Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) is a thirtysomething wife and mother, and she is recovering from a traumatic miscarriage. She is also a recovering alchoholic. Kate's husband is the steadfast John (Peter Sarsgaard), a loving husband and father who ably supports his family. They have two children: Danny (13-year-old Jimmy Bennett, who played the young Capt. Kirk in Star Trek), and Max (Aryana Engineer), a hearing-impaired little girl (incidentally, young Engineer is actually hearing-imparied in rea life). Danny can be a handful, but they're good kids.
Kate, who formerly taught music at Yale, has a longing for another child. Ever-supportive John accompanies Kate to an orphanage, where warm and friendly Sister Abigail (the wonderful CCH Pounder) greets them. John is distracted, and he meets precocious yet well-mannered and articulate Esther (Isabelle Fuhrmann), a nine-year-old from Russia. The Colemans immediately bond with Esther, Sister Abigail mentions the paperwork, and three weeks later Esther has joined the family.
Then, of course, bad things begin to happen.
I am fortunate to have missed many intricate details in the trailer. Looking back, those details provide spoilers. Avoid the trailer. Orphan is a thrill ride, enhanced by a dynamite script (Alex Mace's story, David Johnson's screenplay) and terrific performances.
Farmiga is rapdily becoming one of my favorite actresses. She won the L.A. Film Critics Best Actress award for 2004's Down to the Bone, and she deserved Supporting Actress Oscar nominations for both 2006's The Departed and 2008's Nothing but the Truth. Here, Farmiga's put-upon Kate is the best kind of horror film heroine. Not only can she scream and put you in her corner, but there are actual human layers to her portrait of Kate Coleman. We see her demons, her human frailty ... part of the horror is watching Kate's life come apart at the seams. Farmiga expresses this brilliantly in an excellent piece of acting. She's no stranger to the genre, either: she had a killer role in 2006's underrated Running Scared; and she treaded similar territory in 2007's Joshua, a little-seen psychological horror film about ... a disturbed little boy. But that's where any similaries between Joshua and Orphan end.
And as one performance compliments another, there is the outstanding acting job by 12-year-old Furhmann. Her credits include a guest role in a 2008 Ghost Whisperer episode, and IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base, to which I'll often refer) lists her as a voice credit in the upcoming cable remake of Children of the Corn. How many films have been made of late offering children as horror film antagonists? There was the The Ring (2002) and the The Ring Two (2005), The Omen (2006), Joshua (2007), and probably more that aren't coming to mind right now. Orphan ranks as one of the best in the genre. It held my attention the entire time, and there were moments when I gasped and relished the enjoyment of truly being scared. Fuhrmann nails the role of Esther. She is a fantastic young actress, one to watch.
If you like good scares, see this movie. It's the best horror to be released since 2006's The Descent, and the most original I've seen in ages.
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