| Review:
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Vera Farmiga seems to have her hands full with child
issues lately. And for someone who would seem to have had
her share of hard knocks maternal experience in movies,
nothing could have probably prepared Farmiga for her latest
mom in crisis misadventure, in the domestic chiller, Orphan.***
Directed by Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra (House
Of Wax) and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, Orphan is an
adoption from hell terror spree starring Farmiga as Kate,
a depressed, recovering alcoholic mother of two who has
just experienced a devastating stillbirth. Kate and devoted
spouse John (Peter Sarsgaard) seek emotional healing by
looking into a child to adopt from a local orphanage.***
There Kate is instantly drawn to impeccably well mannered
and suspiciously precocious nine year old Esther (Isabelle
Fuhrman), an Eastern European immigrant orphan of mysterious
origins and a too-good-to-be-true seemingly perfect child.
But beyond Esther's cheery artificial facade and magnanimous
curtsies, trouble looms. Including fomented sibling rivalries,
excessively doting on dad, stalking Kate and John in the
middle of impromptu kitchen sex and, well, a tendency to
bludgeon living things.***
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Final Words:
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A little applied background
snooping isn't the formidable ordeal it used to be for amateur
sleuths back in Hitchcock's day, with just a Google click
away into this problem child's murky family tree. And viewer
tensions abound throughout, with momentum stuck in neutral
only towards the freaky finish line, when the police, as is
all too common convention in these horror thrillers, have
a problem showing up to sort out multiple dangers, for what
seems like just about forever. Orphan: Nerve-shredding creepy
kid home invasion alert, and takeout tween foundling traumas
galore.*** |
