Orphan (2009) Dir: Jaume Collet-Serra
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I'll be honest, I only watched this because my girlfriend wanted to see the prequel in the cinema. With that in mind, I didn't really have any expectations for what this would be.
On a surface level, this Jaume Collet-Serra directed film seemed as though it would be a standard disturbed/evil child horror, but I was pleasantly surprised at what turned out to be a pretty unique and well done twist. The rest of the narrative is relatively standard. It's not bad or anything, but not exactly world beating by any stretch of the imagination.
Isabelle Fuhrman stars as the 'orphan' and provides a sinister and at times disturbing performance, which I say as a compliment by the way.
Also starring is the iconic and genre-defining Vera Farmiga, who always gives at least a reasonably strong performance when she appears on-screen, and this is no different. Her portrayal of grief is particularly impressive throughout the story.
Aryana Engineer plays a young deaf girl, and, as I discovered, is partially deaf in real life, which is a nice touch as far as casting goes. She may only have a supporting role, but I thought she did really well, particularly in the second half of the film.
Peter Sarsgaard has moments of quality dotted about throughout the film, but is a little inconsistent if I'm being honest.
Finally, Jimmy Bennett, who also had a supporting role, gave the weakest performance of any of the key characters, but still had a couple of pretty good scenes.
Overall, this was a pretty middle of the road horror film that, aside from a clever twist, doesn't do much to set itself apart from the rest of the genre. That said, I was still intrigued to watch the prequel.
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