"Note to future horror directors – if you want your horror film to be truly disturbing, make sure that a child plays the lead."

 

Note to future horror directors – if you want your horror film to be truly disturbing, make sure that a child plays the lead. I honestly don’t think there is anything in the world of cinema that has the ability to freak me out more than a kid – not even clowns come close. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a proper ‘psycho horror’ – all the recent releases I’ve seen have been of the slasher/comedy genre, and I was ready for a proper freak out.

Well I can say, without hesitation, that this is one of the more disturbing films I’ve seen in a long time. From the opening sequence through to the icy finale, this film made me jump, freaked me out, and shocked me in the way that a good horror should.

A vast majority of the credit for this should go to the performance of Isabelle Fuhrman, playing the child protagonist Esther. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a performance by a child actor (Isabelle is only 12 years old) that has been so totally convincing, in fact such was the malevolence exuded by the character that the performance of Linda Blair in The Exorcist springs to mind.

At 120 minutes, Orphan certainly isn’t a short film, but by not rushing the plot is allowed to develop properly – there are no jumps, no leaps of faith, and the wickedness of what is about to happen slowly creeps up on you making it all the more disturbing. Add to this a fantastic twist, thankfully not involving aliens or the paranormal, and you’ve got a properly freaky film.

So believable, scary, disturbing – Orphan has got an awful lot going for it. All I can hope is that nothing like this has ever happened in the real world.