Sometimes with prequels, it’s best to wait a few years until you come up with a great reason to justify its existence. Sometimes, it’s better to strike while the iron is hot. The makers of Orphan: First Kill waited thirteen years to tell us the origins of the deranged psycho kid, Esther. What’s odd is that in 2009, Isabelle Fuhrman, who plays Esther, was nine years old. Now she’s pushing twenty-three. If you saw Orphan, you will remember that Esther was revealed to be a thirtysomething dwarf masquerading as a child. Now instead of having a kid playing an adult playing a kid we have an adult playing an adult playing a kid. Got that? I’m not sure why they waited so long, especially since Fuhrman is much too old to play the part, but that at the very least makes it memorable.
They don’t do a convincing job trying to cover up the fact that Fuhrman is too long in the tooth to play a kid either, which may give the film some shelf life as a camp classic. The child doubles are obvious, as are the parts where the other actors are clearly standing on apple boxes to make it look like they’re a lot taller than her. It all seems sloppy and cheesy, which of course, I kind of dug.
Esther murders her way out of an Estonian psycho ward. She eventually poses as a missing child and dupes the parents into thinking she is their long-lost daughter. Before long, she begins manipulating and killing.
Although it’s a little slow to get going, it gets better/cheesier/weirder as it goes along. The first film had an insane twist ending, so naturally, you’re wondering if they will even try to top it. While the twist in this one is appropriately nasty, it falls short of the one from the original. Julia Stiles, who I hadn’t seen in a while, sinks her teeth into the role of the estranged mother gamely and gets the best line of the movie when she says, “If you think I’m going to let some psycho dwarf destroy what I’ve built… you’re mistaken!”
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