name	Orphan
director	Jaume Collet-Serra
producer	Joel SilverSusan DowneyLeonardo DiCaprioJennifer Davisson Killoran
screenplay	David Leslie Johnson
story	Alex Mace
starring	Vera FarmigaPeter SarsgaardIsabelle FuhrmanJimmy BennettAryana EngineerCCH Pounder
music	John Ottman
cinematography	Jeff Cutter
editing	Timothy Alverson
studio	Dark Castle EntertainmentAppian Way Productions
distributor	Warner Bros. Optimum Releasing StudioCanal Village Roadshow
released
runtime	123 minutes
country
language	EnglishAmerican Sign LanguageEstonian
gross	$78,337,373 }}

''Orphan'' is a 2009 psychological thriller and horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Aryana Engineer, Jimmy Bennett, Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. The film centers on a couple who, after the death of their unborn child, adopt a mysterious nine-year old girl. ''Orphan'' was produced by Joel Silver and Susan Downey of Dark Castle Entertainment and Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran of Appian Way Productions. The film was released theatrically in the United States on July 24, 2009. The film received mixed critical reviews although Fuhrman's performance as Esther was acclaimed.

Plot

Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) and her husband John (Peter Sarsgaard) are experiencing strains in their marriage after their third child was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is also recovering from alcoholism. The couple decides to adopt a nine-year-old Russian girl, Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), from the local orphanage. While Kate and John's deaf daughter Max (Aryana Engineer) embraces Esther almost immediately, their son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is less welcoming.

Kate becomes suspicious that there might be problems in Esther's background when Esther expresses far more knowledge of sex than expected of a child her age. Her suspicions deepen when Esther pushes a girl who had been bullying her off the slide at a local park, breaking her leg. While she initially believes Esther's claim that it was an accident, Kate is further alarmed when Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder), the head of the orphanage, warns her and John that bad things always seem to happen when Esther is around. Esther overhears this and, as Sister Abigail is leaving in her car, Esther pushes Max into its path, forcing her to swerve off the road. Sister Abigail rushes to see if Max is hurt, but Esther kills her with a hammer, then convinces Max to help her hide the weapon in their treehouse. Kate is convinced that something is very wrong with Esther, but John does not believe her. Attempting to find out more about Esther, Kate finds the girl's hidden Bible and discovers that it came from the Saarne Institute in Estonia, which she eventually learns is a mental hospital. She a picture of Esther to them and asks for more information.

John loses his trust in Kate when she aggressively grabs Esther and yells at her after she gives Kate a bunch of white roses, all from the grave of Jessica, the stillborn child. She knows that Esther knew because at the start she says 'As long as these roses grow, she will too.' That night, Esther breaks her own arm and says that it still hurt from when Kate grabbed it. She is taken to hospital as John no longer believes Kate.

When Daniel learns about Sister Abigail's death from Max, he tells her of his plan to retrieve the hammer to prove Esther's guilt. However, Esther overhears their conversation and confronts Daniel as he searches the treehouse, setting it ablaze and locking Daniel inside in an attempt to kill him and destroy the evidence. Daniel falls to the ground trying to escape, and is knocked unconscious. Esther attempts to finish him off with a rock, but Max stops her. While Daniel is hospitalized from his fall, Esther slips into his room and smothers him with a pillow, stopping his heart, but doctors quickly revive him. Kate, realizing what happened, attacks Esther, but orderlies help John subdue her. As John takes Esther and Max home, doctors sedate Kate.

That night, Esther tries to seduce a drunken John, who finally realizes that Kate was right and threatens to send Esther back to the orphanage. Meanwhile, as Kate is coming out of sedation, she receives a call from a doctor at the Saarne Institute, who reveals that Esther is actually a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer. She has hypopituitarism, a condition that stunted her physical growth, and has spent most of her life posing as a little girl. The doctor tells Kate that Leena is extremely violent and has murdered at least seven people, and that she bears scars on her neck and wrists, which Esther always kept covered, that she received while trying to escape her strait jacket. Among her victims were a family that adopted her in Estonia, whom she killed because the father rejected her sexual advances.

Esther/Leena flies into a rage after being spurned by John, and ransacks her room. Then, after removing the makeup, false teeth, and body wrappings that enhanced her illusion as youthful "Esther", Leena stabs him with a knife and leaves him for dead. Max witnesses this, and hides. Kate, unable to get John on the phone, rushes home and finds him dead. Leena gets a gun from John's safe and shoots Kate in the arm, then goes searching for Max, finding her in the greenhouse. While Leena shoots at Max, Kate crawls onto the greenhouse roof, breaks through the glass above Leena, and lands on her, knocking her unconscious. Kate takes the gun and leaves the greenhouse with Max. At which point the camera pans back to where Esther was lying, showing that she has gone.

Kate and Esther/Leena both run into the snow covered forest as Kate desperately tries to escape from her with her daughter, Max. Esther runs after her and they end up fighting on the frozen lake with Esther trying repeatedly to stab her. Max then takes the gun Esther dropped and shoots the frozen lake which makes a hole that Esther/Leena and Kate fall in. Kate eventually manages to kick Esther in the head and snaps her neck, killing her instantly. Esther/Leena drowns in the lake. Kate and her daughter are then rescued by police.

Cast

Vera Farmiga as Kate Coleman

Peter Sarsgaard as John Coleman

Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther

Jimmy Bennett as Daniel Coleman

Aryana Engineer as Maxine "Max" Coleman

CCH Pounder as Sister Abigail

Margo Martindale as Dr. Browning

Karel Roden as Dr. Varava

Production

The film was shot in Canada, in the cities of Burlington, Toronto, Port Hope and Montreal.

Release

Box office

The film opened at #4 film in the box office for its opening weekend, making $12,770,000 total, behind ''G-Force'', ''Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'' and ''The Ugly Truth''. The film has grossed a total of $78,337,373.

Home media

''Orphan'' was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 27, 2009 in the US by Warner Home Video. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on November 27 by Optimum Releasing. The home media include alternate scenes and footage, and one alternate ending marketed on the DVD cover. The opening previews also contain a PSA describing the plight of unadopted children in the USA and encouraging domestic adoption. A DVD of the film is seen in a scene from "This Means War".

Alternate ending

In an alternate ending, Esther is seen hurrying into her room. There, she is shown with a face covered in bloody cuts while she re-applies her makeup which makes her look like innocent Esther again. She then puts on the dress she wore for her first day of school and greets the police, who arrived after receiving Kate's frantic call before she reached the house, at the top of the stairs by curtseying and introducing herself, and then she is seen descending the stairs into the crowd of police. It is not explained whether or not she has killed Kate and Max in the alternate ending, although the body of John can be seen.

Response

Critical reception

Critical reaction to ''Orphan'' has been mixed, with the film earning a rating of 55% (43% among the ''Top Critics'') on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus is: "While it has moments of dark humor and the requisite scares, ''Orphan'' fails to build on its interesting premise and degenerates into a formulaic, sleazy horror/thriller". It also earned a 42 out of 100 on Metacritic. Roger Ebert of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' gave ''Orphan'' 3½ stars out of 4, writing: "You want a good horror film about a child from hell, you got one." Mick LaSalle of the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' also gave a positive review, saying: "''Orphan'' provides everything you might expect in a psycho-child thriller, but with such excess and exuberance that it still has the power to surprise."

Todd McCarthy of ''Variety'', was less impressed, writing: "Teasingly enjoyable rubbish through the first hour, ''Orphan'' becomes genuine trash during its protracted second half." Manohla Dargis of ''The New York Times'' wrote, "Actors have to eat like the rest of us, if evidently not as much, but you still have to wonder how the independent film mainstays Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard ended up wading through ''Orphan'' and, for the most part, not laughing." Owen Gleiberman of ''Entertainment Weekly'' gave the film a D+ score, saying, "''Orphan'' isn't scary — it's garish and plodding."

Overtly negative reviews are abundant: from "galling, distasteful trash" (Eric D. Snider) to "old-fashioned and trashy horror flick" (Emanuel Levy) and "relentlessly bad", albeit "entertaining" (Rob Vaux). According to Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' World Movie Reviews, "The problem with Orphan isn't merely that the film is idiotic--it's that it's also sleazy, formulaic and repellant." And according to Keith Phipps from The A.V. Club, "If director Jaume Collet-Serra set out to make a parody of horror-film clichés, he succeeded brilliantly."

Although the film received mixed reviews, Fuhrman's performance was acclaimed and positively received; Emanuel Levy writes Fuhrman "acquits herself with a strong performance, affecting a rather convincing Russian accent and executing sheer evil with an admirable degree of calm and earnestness." The controversy caused filmmakers to change a line in one of their trailers from "It must be difficult to love an adopted child as much as your own," to "I don’t think Mommy likes me very much." Melissa Fay Greene of ''The Daily Beast'' commented: There is a pro-adoption service message on the DVD, advising viewers to consider adoption.

Awards and nominations

Choice Summer Movie: Drama 2010

Award !! Year !! Category !! Result !! Cast/crew
Teen Choice Awards	2009	|
Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film	|	International Feature Length Competition	Golden Raven

See also

''The Hand That Rocks the Cradle''

Fictional portrayals of psychopaths

''Mikey'', another film about a homicidal child, in this case, an actual child

''The Bad Seed'', yet another film about a murderous child, released in 1956

''Murderer (film)'', another film about Hypopituitarism

References

External links

Portman, Jamie. Audiences Scream for Isabelle Fuhrman's ''Orphan'', ''Montreal Gazette'', July 20, 2009

Category:2009 films Category:2000s thriller films Category:2000s horror films Category:American films Category:American thriller films Category:2000s horror films Category:American horror films Category:English-language films Category:American Sign Language films Category:Films directed by Jaume Collet-Serra Category:Works about adoption Category:Films about orphans Category:Films set in Connecticut Category:Films shot in Montreal Category:Films shot in Toronto Category:Psychological thriller films Category:Serial killer films Category:StudioCanal films Category:Teen films Category:Dark Castle Entertainment films Category:Warner Bros. films

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name	Isabelle Fuhrman
birth date	February 25, 1997
birth place	Washington, D.C., U.S.
occupation	Actress
yearsactive	2006–present
homepage	}}

Isabelle Fuhrman (born February 25, 1997) is an American actress. Fuhrman is best known for playing Esther in the 2009 horror film ''Orphan'', and Clove, the female tribute from District Two, in the ''The Hunger Games''.

Life and career

Fuhrman was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Atlanta. Her mother, Elina Fuhrman (née Kozmits), is a journalist who immigrated from Soviet Russia and has worked for CNN. Her father, Nick Fuhrman, is a former political candidate and business consultant. She has an older sister, Madeline Fuhrman, who is a singer and songwriter.

Fuhrman's acting career began at the age of seven, when a casting director from Cartoon Network spotted her waiting for her sister and cast her for one of the shows, ''Cartoon Fridays''. Fuhrman made her big screen debut just a few years later in the 2007 drama ''Hounddog''. The same year, Fuhrman was chosen to star in the movie ''Orphan'' alongside Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard. Fuhrman was cast through an exhaustive nationwide search of young actresses to portray the lead in the Warner Bros. collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and Joel Silver’s Dark Castle Entertainment.

Fuhrman's other credits include the role of Gretchen Dennis (aka Girl Ghost) opposite Jennifer Love Hewitt on the hit TV show ''Ghost Whisperer'', Grace O'Neil in the pilot episode of the 2006 television series ''Justice,'' and a number of national commercials like Pizza Hut and K-Mart. Her performance as Gretchen Dennis in Ghost Whisperer earned her a Young Artist Award nomination. Fuhrman also appeared in comedy skits on the ''Tonight Show with Jay Leno'', and she is known to have provided character voices for Cartoon Network's "Cartoon Fridays".

In 2011, Fuhrman played Angie Vanderveer in the dark comedy ''Salvation Boulevard'' (based on the novel by Larry Beinhart), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Fuhrman is part of an ensemble cast that includes Pierce Brosnan, Marisa Tomei, Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Connelly, and Ed Harris.

In 2012, Fuhrman played Clove, a tribute, in the film ''The Hunger Games'', based on the novel of the same name.

Fuhrman will next be seen co-starring with Will Smith and Jaden Smith in the film, After Earth.

Charitable work

Fuhrman was approached by Save the Children in 2010 to be a celebrity advocate for their "Caps for Good" project. She and several volunteers with Save the Children have helped knit hundreds of baby caps in an effort to reduce the death rate of newborns in developing countries.

Filmography

+ Film and television
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
2006		Grace O'Neil	Episode: "Pilot"
2007		Grasshopper
2008	''Ghost Whisperer''	Gretchen Dennis	Episode: "Pieces of You"
2009		Esther Coleman
2009		Additional Voices	TV movie
2009	''''	Girl (voice)	Episode: "The One About Friends"
2010	''Pleading Guilty''	Carrie	TV movie
2010	''Sammy's Adventures: The Secret Passage''	Hatchling Shelly (voice)
2011	''''	Lyric Byrne	Episode: "Perfect Witness"
2011	''Salvation Boulevard''	Angie
2012	''''	Clove
2012	''''	Michelle
2013	''After Earth	Rayna	Filming

References

External links

Isabelle Fuhrman at FEARnet

Official Twitter

Official Facebook

Category:1997 births Category:Actors from Washington, D.C. Category:American child actors Category:American film actors Category:American people of Russian descent Category:American television actors Category:Living people Category:People from Washington, D.C.

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