Sunday Review: Orphan

EDITORS NOTE:  THIS REVIEW IS COMPLETELY FULL OF SPOILERS.  IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE SECRET TWIST, TURN BACK NOW.  GEOFF AND I WILL TOTALLY RUIN THIS MOVIE FOR YOU.

Geoff:
Don’t adopt a kid.  Don’t keep a gun in your in-home safe.  Don’t doubt your wife.

Just a few things I learned from Orphan, a dark-lit horror film set in winter that almost made me forget the clear, sunny day in full resplendence outside the theater.  Here’s the breakdown: Kate and John Coleman are a struggling but happy couple with two beaming kids (the daughter a near-deaf mute, and you know as soon as you see sign language that it’s gonna come into play later), but Kate has a miscarriage or a still birth or something during the third go-around, so they decide to adopt.  Kate’s a recovering alcoholic.  John’s a … wait a minute … I’m just now, just as I’m typing this, catching all the potential “John & Kate + 3″ jokes.  Regardless, John cheated once, so that’s his cross to bear.  The couple adopt a little girl who paints nice pictures (unless you put them under a blacklight) and who has a Russian accent, which takes some getting used to hearing without chuckling a little bit.  Anyhoo, the little girl turns evil on ‘em, but not without using the innocent act to play the parents against each other, all so she can *spoiler coming* sleep with John, because it turns out she’s actually a sociopathic, 37-year-old little person, which actually did genuinely creep me the fuck out, to be honest.

It’s part of the point of a horror film, so I can’t really begrudge this one for doing so, but it’s the kind of film where I spend a lot of my time pulling my hair out because people a) don’t listen to one another, or b) are oblivious to certain goings on, or c) don’t tell things to others even past the point of when they clearly should.  It makes for a very stressful viewing experience, because I’m sitting there thinking, “Answer that phone!” “Don’t drink that whole bottle of wine and get drunk, John!” “Go for the gun in your safe before she gets to it!” “Go upstairs and find your daughter and, the both of you, for God’s sake, keep your backs to a wall so she can’t sneak up behind you!”

And, most importantly, “LISTEN TO YOUR GODDAMN WIFE WHEN SHE TELLS YOU THE CHILD IS EVIL.”  I don’t know if I would call this a good film.  It was sufficiently stressful, so … marks in that area, for sure.  But I don’t know if I’d ever buy it or rent it off the shelf to remember any part that I really liked all that much.  Maybe that means I’m giving it a “meh”?

Susan:
OH. MY. FUCK.

Yeah, this movie was scary….SCARY AWESOME.  I’m sorry, call me daft but I did not see the oh-my-god-she’s-really-a-dwarf twist coming and I sat literally on the edge of my seat for the last 15 or so minutes of the film.  My jaw hurt when I left because I had been clenching it so badly.  This movie affected me viscerally and yeah, no one listens to anyone but then again WHO WOULD BELIEVE YOU IF YOU TOLD THEM ANY OF THIS???  Seriously, if your twelve-year-old son came to you and was like, “Um, my nine-year-old adopted Russian sister held a utility knife to my junk and threatened me like a seasoned member of the KGB,” would you believe him?  Probably not.  Because that is CRAZY.

The audience I saw the movie with reacted similarly.  There were a lot of chuckles (mostly because the movie borders on absurdity at times) but during the scene when Esther tries to seduce her “daddy,” a wave of discomfort, disbelief, confusion, and aversion rolled around the entire theater.  Some people laughed, some sort of groaned, but there were WTFs all around.  Then comes the big reveal when you want to crawl out of your skin.  UGH CRAZY TINY DWARF LADY, I said to myself, PLEASE DO NOT KILL PETER SARSGAARD.  I LIKE HIM.  She did not listen.  That’s what you get for drinking all that wine, Peter Sarsgaard.  I guess you shouldn’t let your GAARD down next time!  (GET IT???)

I am too overwhelmed by all the awesome to even write a coherent thought about the thing.  Alls I know is I checked my backseat for crazy tiny lady dwarves (dwarfs?) when I left the theater.  It’s the best kind of scary movie where you know it probably couldn’t really happen but then again maybe (just maybe) it could.

Geoff:
Yeah, the entire seduction scene also had everyone in my theater really uncomfortable.  I heard a couple nervous chuckles, and one guy in front of me said “WHAT” in that way that’s not really a question, and I myself was practically climbing up and over the back of my seat when she was stroking his hair.  And then when she takes out her false teeth??? Good thing I didn’t have any candy left.  I might’ve lost it.

I personally was kinda happy to see Sarsgaard bite it, though.  Pushing the girl off the slide.  The son’s tree house going up in flames.  The nun’s dead body found in the creek bed a few hundred yards from the house.  How many incidents surrounding his adopted daughter would that guy have to have seen before he thought maybe something was up?  I know, I know, he’s supposed to be the character oblivious to reason, but it made me glad to see him go.  Listen to your wife instead of trying to talk her into doin’ it in the kitchen, Peter Sarsgaard.  It just might save your life.

Your enthusiasm has swayed me, Susan.  I’m inclined to go a little above “meh,” I think, maybe to a “had a good (read: stressful) time.”  All the same, though, I really don’t need to see the thing again.

Susan:
Oh MAN and the THERAPIST??  Who all of a sudden becomes the least empathetic person toward the mother in the whole movie??  Because she’s completely manipulated by Esther?? Clearly, the makers of this film do not have a lot of faith in the psychiatric industry.

The thing I don’t get about the movie is why the crazy dwarf lady would choose to seduce men by acting like their DAUGHTER instead of by posting an ad on the internet offering sex with a “little girl with lady boobs.”  I feel like in the age of the internet, this psychotic lady dwarf is some fetishist’s dream.  Oh, poor misguided psycho lady dwarf, there is a place for you in the world now.  And it is called Adult Friend Finder.

But despite any plot holes or subtle horror movie racism (The black nun from the orphanage is the first to die despite the fact that she’s a totally peripheral character — it’s like a rule, the black character just has to go first) OR CRAZY SCARY FIGHTS UNDER ICE (OMG, it’s like the worst thing I could imagine, a knife fight under the surface of a frozen lake…..UGHHHHGHGHGHG), I was able to suspend my disbelief/discomfort at every turn.  I found this movie light on boredom and heavy in AWESOME factor.  I’d totally see it again.  Two tiny thumbs up!