Friday, October 17, 2014

31 Days of Halloween - Day 17 - Movie 2



After the still birth of their third child, a couple (Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard) decide to adopt nine-year old Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) an adorable, polite and precocious child hiding a dangerous secret which tears her new family apart.

Orphan (2009) is one of those movies that depends on characters acting stupidly in order to sustain its running time. It also chalks up a lot of obvious creepy bad seed child moments that don't challenge the audience either. In spite of all of that, I actually enjoyed this movie quite a bit. The adult characters are all played by very talented actors, but it's really Isabelle Fuhrman and Aryana Engineer as the younger, deaf daughter, Max, who make this movie worth watching. Not only do they both give outstanding performances, but their onscreen relationship is what holds the whole movie together and makes what otherwise would have been a completely mundane movie rise above it's clichés into something that kept me, at least, engaged throughout.


 

No comments: