Reviewed by: Jason McKiernan for Filmcritic.com
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Producers: Leonardo DiCaprio, Susan Downey, Jennifer Davisson Killoran, Joel Silver
Screenwriter: David Leslie Johnson
Actors: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, CCH Pounder, Jimmy Bennett, Aryana Engineer, Margo Martindale
MPAA Rating: R
FilmCritic Rating = 2.0 out of 5.0 Stars
As an actor, you have to consider the possibility that your career has jumped the shark once you agree to star in an “Evil Child” movie — you know, that inexplicably long-lived subgenre where the exceedingly creepy kid wreaks lethal havoc on his/her family and surroundings. That thought must have been swirling around in the heads of Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard, two truly great actors inexplicably found at the center of Orphan, another assembly-line rehash of every other Evil Child film from the last two decades. Their acting alone is enough to raise the bar here slightly, but one still must wonder how they got roped into this at all. Maybe they truly thought this would be the exception to the rule. Or maybe it was the paycheck.
If it means anything — and in dealing with such a consistently awful subgenre, I think it does — Orphan is most certainly not the worst of its kind. It’s moody and atmospheric enough, and the lead actors bring more to the table than the material deserves. There’s also at least an attempt to probe into the characters’ lives, so they are more than just running, screaming, blood-spurting automatons. But enough caveats. This movie is still a ridiculous, unbelievable horror show in which we root for a mature woman to brutally slaughter a little girl. It feels uncomfortable and wrong… and not in a good way.
Read the full review by Jason McKiernan at FilmCritic.com.
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All this criticism of this particular movie is ridiculous. There are alot of movies out these days that could be called distasteful and down right horrible but they are fiction. People take movies and tv way to serious and need to pay more attention to important issues like what is happening in Washington DC.
I will end up watching this movie...and it will not affect the reality of our life. Just another blip on the entertainment radar.