I'm not really a fan of slasher/horror movies because I think they are either entirely hackneyed or so post-modern, self-aware and *different* that the story gets lost in the middle of the formal acrobatics needed to avoid banality. Of course what makes these later movies different boils down to more dullness - as if the writer/director is pulling ideas out of a hat and keeping the ones that are the most unusual. You end up with stories that are so far fetched they're totally stupid; where the audience laughs at the movie and somehow that's a sign of genius. I don't get it. Orphan is one of these post-horror pictures that maybe has the most insane story I have ever seen in a movie.
One other classic device used by horror film makers is to distract people with layer upon layer of hum-drum details that they then forget all the holes in the story. In Orphan we are told that this wife and mother of two is a dry drunk who gave up the sauce when she had some accident involving falling in an icy pond with her deaf daughter when she was pregnant and was rescued by her husband. (I'm already lost.) So she lost her baby (I think) and for some reason they decide to adopt a girl to take the lost daughter's place (because the two kids they already have are not enough, I guess). So they go to the orphanage and find the creepiest girl in the house and bring her home.
Esther is an amazing 9 year-old. She was born in Russian and speaks perfect English with a vocabulary that would make a college professor jealous; she is fluent in American Sign Language and communicates flawlessly with the deaf daughter; she is a genius naive artist whose work is reminiscent of Henri Rousseau and Modigliani; she has a Victorian sense of style, which for unknown reasons is never questioned by the mother and father. Oh - and she wears ribbons on her wrists and neck and insists on bathing and changing in a locked room with nobody around - both totally normal. Whatever.
As the story unfolds, we see Esther being more and more bizarre and everyone slowly realizing it other than the father who thinks she's totally normal. Maybe I'm being too dense here, but this mostly created frustration for me. It would be one thing if the girl was doing evil things and they couldn't get rid of her (like the Exorcist or even Friday the 13th), but to accept totally messed up stuff as normal just served to alienate me from the dad. It's not really *dramatic irony* when we see the same stuff he sees and then he comes to a different, stupid conclusion. I think things like this are the foundation of the genre, but they're banal and useless as a device.
OK - so I've tried delaying it for awhile now, but here it is: SPOILER ALERT!! (Sorry - I have to tell the big reveal to continue this. The rest of this post will be a spoiler.) It turns out that Esther is a 33 year-old 'proportional dwarf' who was in a mental hospital in Estonia (you see - Estonia, not Russia! aha!) and somehow hurt her wrists and neck on her straight jacket (huh?) and then escaped and is playing a 9 year-old girl because she's a sex addict and likes seducing and sleeping with men who are her adopted fathers. Then she kills the people and burns their houses down. Got it?
So I have a few questions that I'll ask, risking being accused of having no sense of humor and not being able to suspend disbelief or something (and I won't even get to the elephant in the room about the proportional dwarfism). What happened to the third baby who was stillborn and why can't they try to have another kid rather than adopt? What is the point in the young daughter being deaf? Why does it snow every day in Connecticut and does it really ever get cold enough there to freeze a pond? If you were am Estonian proportional dwarf, why would you pretend to be 9 and not 14 (at least then you would be honestly sexual and not pre-sexual)? For a 33 year-old, isn't Esther still massively talented? What's the point of showing a gun (in Act 2) if it really doesn't ever go off? If you're a proportional dwarf woman trying to sleep with men, why would you pretend to be their daughter and not, say, their next door neighbor girl? Don't men normally shy away from sex acts with daughters (adopted or genetic)?
I don't know - I guess I have no joy in my life or something. Sure - it was fun to watch to see how ridiculous the movie was turning out to be - but that was more of a 'laughing at it' rather than 'laughing with it'. Even considering the gigantic leaps of logic in it, the dialogue was almost entirely wooden and tired. Ugh. Who cares?
Stars: .5 of 4 (It gets a half because it is about a crazy Estonian proportional dwarf girl who sexually seduces adopted fathers and is an art genius.)
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You're dumb. In the fall/winter it basically is snowing almost every day in Connectict. It really does get cold enough to freeze a pond. The third baby died...that's all there is to the baby, they don't try to have another kid becuase the mom is tramautized by having the baby die in her womb. Thus the therapy. The daughter is death to add more suspense into the movie. The daughter unable to communicate effienciently in words can't express or tell the parents what is going on due to the fear of the Orphan. For a 33 year old woman, she is not extremely talented. Many women at 33 are able to play piano fluently and many estranged serial killers are very smart and able to do what she's done. As the movie portrays her, she is a quick learner. Showing the gun in "Act 2" simply foreshadows to show that she didn't just "suddenly" find the gun towards the end of the movie. The rest of your questions dealing with why she chose to be what age and sexual preferences of men is irrelevant. There surely can be other reasons for why she's 9 and pretends to be the daughter, but I believe it is a fucking movie...so they made it like that. If she was just the "next door neighbor girl" it would be a completely different movie. It's a fucking movie and that's the way the storyline goes.
ReplyDeleteThere were no "gigantic leaps of logic" in the movie. If you were critical in any way you would be able to answer almost all of the retarded questions you've asked.