Orphan: First Kill, 2022.
Directed by William Brent Bell.
Starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Rossif Sutherland, and Julia Stiles.
SYNOPSIS:
After orchestrating a brilliant escape from an Estonian psychiatric facility, Esther travels to America by impersonating the missing daughter of a wealthy family.
Jaume Collet-Serra’s 2009 horror film Orphan may have been a modest box office success and has endured as something of a cult fave, but who among us ever expected any sort of follow-up?
Given the film’s central conceit – of hiring then-11-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman to portray Esther, a 30-something woman with a hormone disorder who poses as a young girl – a prequel which sees a now-adult Fuhrman reprise the role was always going to feel a little awkward.
And though Fuhrman tries her damnedest with what little she’s given here, Orphan: First Kill – which is being kicked to streaming the same day it hits cinemas – is a largely uninspired reheat of its predecessor, albeit saved from outright dud territory by an amusingly bonkers third reel.
First Kill basically attempts to fill the gaps on Esther’s life leading up to the events of the original, opening with her escaping an Estonian institute in 2007 and being granted passage to the U.S. by posing as the missing daughter of a married couple, Tricia (Julia Stiles) and Allen Albright (Rossif Sutherland).
As such the story, co-conceived by Orphan writer David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, quickly settles into a retread of what came before, as Esther moves in with a family who gradually come to realise there’s far more to her than meets the eye. Of course she clashes with the Albrights’ son, cosies up to the father, and hates the mother; we saw it all last time.
As a prequel, this also feels decidedly stock; we’re predictably shown how Esther got her famous neck and wrist ties and dress, and also where she developed her penchant for invisible UV painting. One suspects the filmmakers pondered the possibility that audiences simply didn’t remember Orphan all that much – it has been 13 years, after all – and so fired the iconography home with sledgehammer-force.
For its first two-thirds, First Kill almost entirely eschews the campy charm of its predecessor – which was powered so expertly by its brilliantly unhinged plot twist – for a down-the-line prequel adding little interesting shade to the scenario. It’s decidedly more violent than the 2009 film but also less interesting, relying on predictable “suspense” beats and some very dumb mythology-building which quickly becomes comically contrived.
It’s tedious waiting for the Albrights to come to the conclusion that we as the audience did over a decade ago, though writer David Coggeshall does deserve a sliver of credit for concocting a howlingly deranged rug-pull in the pic’s later stages.
If it can’t match the utter WTF moment that was the Esther reveal in the original film, it’s a fair effort, flipping the script in a genuinely unexpected way that sees the film finally settling into an entertaining mode – albeit far too late in the day to actually salvage it. This reveal recontextualises the first two acts in a cute way, even if the climax – a wretchedly conceived high-wire showdown rife with appalling CGI – swiftly circles back to mere badness.
The cast tries at least; Fuhrman seems earnestly glad to be back, even if there’s no hiding how much older she looks, and the tricks employed to conceal her height – a combination of forced perspective and child stand-ins – are goofy and oft-distracting.
It only adds further fuel to the argument that this movie should’ve been made about a decade ago, yet in a film with so many scripted issues it’s ultimately far down the list of problems. The rest of the cast doesn’t make too much of a dent, though after being wasted for most of the movie, Julia Stiles does get a few meaty scenes to sink her teeth into later on.
This is acceptably made by workmanlike filmmaker William Brent Bell (The Devil Inside, The Boy); it’s 25 minutes shorter than the original, with pacing being its only real improvement. Yet creatively, the flimsy attempts to make Esther more sympathetic fall almost totally flat, and it’s impossible to take the film’s thoughtful musings – re: America’s relationship with immigrants – seriously.
Though there are occasional flecks of the knowing camp that made the first Orphan work surprisingly well, a solid two-thirds of this film feel like a leaden, unimaginative attempt to spin a 13-year-old movie off into its own IP, franchise, or – wretch – universe.
Even if Orphan: First Kill didn’t feel years too late, it’d still be a desperately unambitious sequel memorable only for a riotously daft third act.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
