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ORPHAN |
Orphan is a 2009 American psychological thriller film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, and Isabelle Fuhrman.
The film centers on a couple who, after the death of their unborn
child, adopt a mysterious nine-year old girl where she is not who they
think she is. 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 9-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 after witnessing John and Kate having intercourse,
saying "I know they fuck." 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. Esther
continually exhibits increasingly violent and stranger behavior, as her
paintings begin to exhibit grisly murders. 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 e-mails 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 the 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 as a serial killer
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 an American family that adopted her in Estonia and brought her in
the USA, 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
either unconscious or 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. Leena, hiding a knife behind her back, pretends to revert to
her little-girl persona, begging, "Please, Mommy, don't let me die."
Kate angrily responds, "I'm not your fucking mommy!" She kicks Leena in
the face, snapping her neck and sending her back into the pond to drown.
Kate and Max are then rescued by police.
Cast
- Vera Farmiga as Kate Coleman
- Peter Sarsgaard as John Coleman
- Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther/Leena Klammer
- CCH Pounder as Sister Abigail
- Jimmy Bennett as Daniel "Danny" Coleman
- Margo Martindale as Dr. Browning
- Karel Roden as Dr. Varava
- Aryana Engineer as Maxine "Max" Coleman
- Rosemary Dunsmore as Grandma Barbara
- Jamie Young as Brenda
- Lorry Ayers as Joyce
- Brendan Wall as detective
- Genelle Williams as Sister Judith
- Mustafa Abdelkarim and Landon Norris as Daniel's friends
- Gemma James Smith as teacher
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