Review: Isabelle Fuhrman Is Back and Bigger Than Ever In The Camp Blast Of "Orphan: First Kill"

by Jason Adams

Like how The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was really about Vietnam, they say horror movies reflect the big anxieties of their times. And the Orphan franchise -- which I can giddily now call a "franchise" thanks to the gleefully ridiculous sequel Orphan: First Kill hitting Paramount+ this weekend -- is like a dollop of arsenic foamed across the surface of our collective pumpkin-spice latte fetish. In other words, it's a poison dart tossed straight at Big Mommy Blog to puncture the heart of the Social Media Wellness Cult. The diabolical Esther (played to utter perfection by Isabelle Fuhrman again) is a sweet-faced and ribbon-laced Trojan Horse sneaked onto your curated feed and set to blow up your pretty pictures from the inside out. She's Bo Burnham's "White Woman's Instagram" song plucked by ice pick across harp string.

But first, let's step back. (And yes this review will spoil the big surprise of the original film -- it's been thirteen years after all.) The first Orphan came out in 2009 and into the home of Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard...

They played Kate and John, parents of two who were in mourning of a third, dead in utero. Kate and John were wildly insipid caricatures of the dream of Modern Living -- obscenely upper-middle wealthy but with very little actual work career-wise to get in the way of their standing around vacant-eyed in their Nancy Meyer Kitchen, sipping wine, endlessly lamenting the single nick in their perfect existence.  Astride their magazine-ready modernist home in a giant greenhouse Kate grew a rose-bush to memorialize their dead baby, marked with a homespun but well-calligraphied poetry placard.

At what point we're meant to laugh at these clowns director Jaume Collet-Serra would only wink wink nudge nudge, but the point came fairly quickly for me. They have so very much to give -- so much money, so much love, so much Pottery Barn! -- so Kate and John decide to adopt a Needy Child. Enter Esther -- cue violent strings!! -- to crash their house of thick-stock cards straight down to a shambles. Esther, you see, wasn't really a Needy Child at all! Esther was really a middle-aged Estonian Dwarf, and she wanted to fuck Daddy to death!

That remains one of the greatest rug-pulls in the history of cinema as far as I'm concerned. There is the darkest delight in the black heart and et cetera orifices of the Orphan franchise, all in the name of molesting happy modern family fetishism. So here we are thirteen lucky lucky years later with a prequel. Directed by Brahms: The Boy II director William Brent Bell this time around, the most important factor is thankfully on site with Fuhrman, deliciously and derangedly, returning to the role that made her famous. Infamous? Well she's famous in my house, at least. A legend, really! And she more than lives up to that. She's our own little Jason Voorhees in ribbons and lace, coming for your Wine O'clock with a vengeance. 

There's such a camp glee emanating out from just the base concept of this film -- formerly a little girl playing an adult woman pretending to be a little girl, now Furhman is an adult woman pretending to be an adult woman pretending to be a little girl. There's some trickery played about with perspectives and child stand-ins, but the film refreshingly doesn't seem to give any of that too much of a damn -- mostly she just seems to be crouching on her knees half the time, and the uncanniness of Fuhrman is the point. Nobody needs to fall for this lil' weirdo's shtick to not still be afraid, be very very afraid.

Flashing us back a couple of years before the events of the first film Orphan: First Kill finds Esther escaping from her Estonian mental institution thanks to the in-way-over-her-head musical therapist that they've just hired, and going on the run. (And if you think of Titane at any point along here you're my kind of people, come sit by me.) She sits down at a computer and, like she's ordering a new cashmere throw, googles missing children in America. She picks out the richest looking family, and she's off. No Dickensian orphanages with gruel on the menu for our Esther -- she's a crown jewel and will only be thought of and treated as such, thank you very much. 

The family she insinuates herself into this time are the Albrights, Allen (Rossif Sutherland) and Tricia (Julia Stiles) and their teenage son Gunnar (Matthew Finlan). They make Kate and John look like a destitute leper colony. Of old money and name, their dark-wood-home stretches for eons in every direction, which is useful because they've got some secrets of their own tucked away in their seventeen closets. Allen is a famous painter while Tricia is all about charities and benefits and throwing lavish galas, and if what you thought the Orphan franchise needed was galas then have I got the movie for you. Gunnar, for the first-born's part, is all sneering privilege in a fencing lamé, and if you think they show that fencer's foil a few times too many well just you wait. 

Losing the shock that made the first Orphan so memorable might've hobbled the prequel right off the bat -- we are after all wise to Esther's game -- but First Kill makes up for it with some rug-pulls of its own that are in their own way delightful, and which I promise not to spoil today. I will just say that First Kill is game, it has come to play, and in Fuhrman it has one hell of a main stage player to savor. She's proven herself more than capable outside of this franchise -- she was riveting in last year's sports drama The Novice -- but the knowing smirk that she brings to the table here, all in body and soul, is endless enjoyment. (There's a moment in a car-ride here that should inspire one thousand memes and I will laugh every damn time it pops up in my feed.) Orphan: First Kill knows how ridiculous it is from its saddle-shoes to the purple ribbon tied in its hair and it embraces its madness, knocking every family portrait off the mantle and pissing on them for good measure. Give me ten more of these movies!

Comments

[Mr Ripley79]

Vera Farmiga made the first one work.

[thefilmjunkie]

Oh, how I wish we saw the same movie! This was nowhere near as fun and nutty as the first one for me, even after that twist pushes it to become more of a dark comedy than anything else. The writing was so clunky and heavy-handed and the ending felt rushed and sloppily executed. There was a really funny needle drop that made me laugh, though.