Everything nice
Melora Koepke
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Welcome to the family: Isabelle Fuhrman, right, in Orphan
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Child actress Isabelle Fuhrman makes a mean Orphan into a smart career move
Mainstream Hollywood movies tend to underestimate little girls, but not Orphan, in which a little girl wreaks unimaginable havoc on the family that adopts her, and ruins everything. You've probably seen the film posters of a little brunette with pigtails and a glum expression, in an uptight, dark pinafore dress and a ribbon around her neck, over the tagline: "There's something wrong with Esther." Orphan, the most effective and original Hollywood-made horror film to surface in a long while, takes as its topic the grist and gristle of troubled family dynamics - and twists it. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, a transplanted Catalan who began his L.A. career with the remake of House of Wax, the film strikes a superbly felt balance between the everyday misunderstandings within an average family and the sharp tension of an evil-child horror movie. The keenly observed details of family life along with thematic undercurrents I won't reveal here, hearken back to '70s horror films that got under your skin in ways that slasher films never could.
The Colemans are a family in crisis. After a miscarriage, Kate (Vera Farmiga) struggles to get over her grief, first with alcohol, then with nightmares, and finally with the decision to adopt an older child to complete her family. With her husband John (Peter Sarsgaard), they decide to adopt a middle child to fit between their oldest, son Danny, and youngest, daughter Max. They find Esther, an unusually talented, creative Russian child at
a local orphanage. But as soon as Esther comes home with them, things start to go very, very wrong.The teaser-trailers for Orphan have already met with protests from adoption groups, who claim that the film won't encourage families to adopt older children into their midst (it won't). But what makes Orphan truly unsettling is the fantastic work of the film's young star, Isabelle Fuhrman, a preteen ingenue unlike what we're used to, who studied with a Method coach and an Estonian dialect coach for the role, and claims her character was based on close observation of people around her.
"If America hates me, I've done my job!" chirps Fuhrman in an interview last week before Orphan's premiere. "I'm supposed to make everyone hate me, but at the same time be, whoa, I feel sorry for her, but she's so mean!"
"My usual day was I got my hair curled and [got ready]... and the minute I got into my dress, I would transform into her, and go through the day being her, being Esther. Something clicked in the morning when I put on the dress: 'Let's go, time to perform.'"
Still, those Orphan posters are everywhere - isn't Isabelle afraid that after the film opens, people, including casting directors, will never look at her the same way again?
"No, I am very different - I've said that a lot! I'm not afraid of being typecast, I realized that a lot of casting directors choose kids who match the part... A lot of people I've met who recognize me expect me to be this freaky child who is weird, who walks around with this glare, but I'm not! People are used to seeing actresses do roles that are fit for them, who fit into their category, whereas I morphed into the part."
"She was always asking why, why is she like this?" says Farmiga, who plays her mother in the film. "And I really think that this little girl does it to understand why people are the way they are. She wasn't just costumed. She wanted to know the reasons, she wanted to understand."
Orphan
It is a rare and pleasing thing to announce to you all that I was wrong about Jaume Collet-Serra's Orphan. Well, I was and I wasn't. Let me explain, when word came down about this project every horror fan in creation knew what to expect in terms of the evil child clichés because they'd been done to death. Nothing about this project was appealing because it was not in demand and was inevitably bound to live just up to expectation and not more...which for a horror film is just fatal. So yes, Jaume Collet-Serra's Orphan does fall victim to every cliché of the sub-genre but none of that matters because of the film's mind melting plot twist and the career making turn of the delightfully talented tween lead actress Isabelle Fuhrman.
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Director Jaume Collet-Serra redeems his career from the celluloid abortion that was the remake of House of Wax but make no mistake about it, it isn't his directing or the screenplay that salvages this film from the direct to DVD fate that awaited it but the discovery and casting of Isabelle Fuhrman as the titular Orphan. Isabelle Fuhrman, who'd done precious little work worthy of attention just shines in the evil little role that could. I think it's safe to say that she raises the material to whole new depths and lends renewed credibility to a sub-genre that had effectively died with that Omen remake a few years ago. Orphan is not scary in the least but damn if it isn't entertaining to watch. The film screened at Fantasia, a notably jaded crowd that went in ready to be disappointed and rip it a new one one the credits rolled, but instead we were blown away by how good it turned out. Trust me, in the years to come you'll be hearing from Isabelle Fuhrman. Oh, don't let anyone spill the plot twist to you before you see it. You won't see it coming.
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Pedro Eggers
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