Film review: Orphan

Published on Saturday 1 August 2009 15:37

ORPHAN (15) * * *

The trouble with evil children is that your own Supernanny instincts kick in. Mine certainly kicked in over nine-year-old Esther, a monstrous demon seed adopted by Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. Played by Isabelle Fuhrman, left, who is astonishingly good in some rather age-inappropriate scenes, little Esther initially appears precociously articulate and able to knock off a little Tchaikovsky on the piano while never dropping her Wednesday Addams expression.

Already you can sense this adoption is a bad idea, since Esther is clearly smarter than both her parents put together – one a recovering alcoholic, the other emotionally deaf and with an eye for other ladies. Soon there are mysterious accidents involving hammers, razors and guns. And still no-one wonders if the Grand Guignol kid might be at least in need of a day or two on the Naughty Step. Rather too late on, the mother decides to Google the phrase "children who kill".

This is a cheap movie that pretends it doesn't know it's cheap. If Esther materialises silently and unexpectedly once at the edge of the camera, she does it a dozen times – but this is merely the film warming up its trash aesthetic before heading onwards to a memorably queasy finale in this lunatic Montessori nightmare.