Orphan: First Kill

Some of the best hor­ror films come from min­ing threat out of the unthreat­en­ing. Be it a lit­tle boy in The Omen, food­ie Psy­chol­o­gists in The Silence of The Lambs or white lib­er­als in Get Out. Orphan, which had a rea­son­ably recep­tion with crit­ics and audi­ences back in 2009 played with a vil­lain­ous 9‑year-old girl, adopt­ed by and kind cou­ple hop­ing to repair their mar­riage after a tragedy, except for (plot twist!) she wasn’t a 9‑year-old girl after all, and instead a 33-year-old psy­chopath with a hor­mone dis­or­der that has stunt­ed her growth. If the film is known for any­thing it’s the glee­ful unveil­ing of this twist in the final act, where Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) rips off her child­ish clothes, takes out her false teeth, and scrubs off her make-up to reveal her true self.

The Orphan ends with Esther dead at the bot­tom of an icy pond, which scup­pered any sequel poten­tial, but 13 years lat­er Esther now returns in a pre­quel, Orphan First Kill, set a cou­ple of years before the events of our intro­duc­tion to Esther. Isabelle Fuhrman, now 25 and fresh off crit­i­cal acclaim for her per­for­mance in the psy­cho­log­i­cal row­ing thriller The Novice, returns to her ear­ly role.

In First Kill, we see Esther escape from an Eston­ian men­tal insti­tu­tion by dis­patch­ing a bunch of its employ­ees like an angry chi­huahua and make her way to Amer­i­ca. She then pos­es as the long-miss­ing daugh­ter of a wealthy fam­i­ly, the steely Tri­cia (Julia Stiles), her naïve hus­band Allen (Rossif Suther­land) with their priv­i­leged douchebag son Gun­na (Matthew Fin­land). Except, this being an Orphan pre­quel, a big twist awaits.

For those now doing the maths, yes, that means orig­i­nal­ly an 11-year-old actress played a 33-year-old pre­tend­ing to be a 9‑year-old. Now, we have a 25-year-old play­ing a 31-year-old pre­tend­ing to be a 9‑year-old. If that sounds ridicu­lous it’s because it is. Through a series of body dou­bles, forced per­spec­tives, and actors stand­ing on plat­forms, Orphan First Kill has a ful­ly grown adult in a child’s role.

At first it is com­plete­ly jar­ring, but as the film con­tin­ues it becomes a strange joy to expe­ri­ence. Each time Fuhrman is obvi­ous­ly switched out or Julia Stiles is clear­ly stood on a box the B‑movie hokey­ness is utter­ly hilar­i­ous. That fun is only enhanced by the com­plete seri­ous­ness with which each actor is per­form­ing their part, par­tic­u­lar­ly the cat-and-mouse duo­logues that Stiles and Fuhrman prac­ti­cal­ly spit at each other.

The ques­tion that comes with Orphan First Kill, is are we laugh­ing at it or with it? Direc­tor William Brent Bell, best known for The Boy and The Dev­il Inside, has hor­ror cre­den­tials but is not real­ly known for high camp or land­ing jokes in the mid­dle of jump scares. Per­haps it doesn’t mat­ter, and if we are able to allow hor­ror to come from the most unthreat­en­ing peo­ple we should just appre­ci­ate rock-sol­id com­e­dy from unex­pect­ed sources too.