Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. Starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman and CCH Pounderi. Horror, USA, 2009, 123 min.

Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard) are having marital problems related to alcohol addiction, fragile psyches and blaming games. So they decide to adopt a nine-year-old girl after the tragic loss of their unborn child in HOUSE OF WAX remake director Jaume Collet-Serra’s stylish shocker streaked with a morbid William Castle-esque playfulness. But artistic and angelic Esther (Isabelle Furhman) is not what she seems.

Before you can say BAD SEED again Esther is refusing to take off her pretty antiquated ribbons, bathing in private, playing Russian roulette with her younger deaf sister Max (Aryana Engineer), threatening her older brother Daniel (Jimmy Bennet) with emasculation and hammering orphanage nun Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder) to death. Will Kate’s Internet research into ‘Children Who Kill’ make her oblivious husband finally face the sinister psychotic truth about their terror tyke? Actually no, it’s up to Dr.  Varava (Karl Roden) to give us ‘the explanation’ about her Daddy fixations. Since when do parents never fully investigate their adopted child’s background or family tree? Just one of the many holes in this Swiss cheese corker co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, of all people. Thoroughly contrived, yet teasingly scary, if over-reliant on misdirection jolts, when Esther’s admittedly intriguing ‘secret’ is finally revealed this manipulative winder-upper flips completely into high camp gear. The over-extended finale is a flurry of loony Lolita revenge, slightly suspenseful comeuppance, endless creeping in the dark and a string of fake demises. Way too long at over 2 hours to support its B Movie lineage – considerable time is wasted on Kate’s grief over her miscarriage and drunken neglect that cost Max her hearing - Farmiga nevertheless steps up to the broken family mender mark in what can best be described as an enjoyably daffy yet suitably sick crowd-pleaser. But one can only wonder why she’d want to go through exactly the same emotions as she did in the similar JOSHUA? Furhman does the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth innocence well too and grounds the gimmick casting with finesse.

Offered to ADRIFT director Hans Horn who turned it down before Collet-Serra came on board, the mock-seriousness is ORPHAN’s trump card, the dragged out ending its disappointment.

Alan Jones

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GORE IN THE STORE
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

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