Orphan

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

(R)

**

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An adopted girl turns out to be a horror.

Orphan is nothing but a “high-gloss horror show,” said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. In this “depraved, worthless piece of filth,” Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga are parents who, after losing a child to stillbirth, decide to adopt a 9-year-old girl. The remarkable Isabelle Fuhrman plays Esther, a terrifically creepy kid with dark eyes, Old World manners, and a faint Russian accent, who ends up being more of a nightmare than a blessing. Director Jaume Collet-Serra can only do so much with the ludicrous script, which teems with sadistic violence and flirts with pedophilia. Screenwriters David Leslie Johnson and Alex Mace “deserve their own circle of hell” for thinking up such absurd plot twists. While there’s no denying that the film is ridiculous, at least it succeeds in being “unsettling,” said Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. Collet-Serra has taken a “formulaic story in a familiar genre” and delivered a film that can still surprise—and scare. Audiences should take Orphan for what it is, said Ty Burr in The Boston Globe. “Entertaining trash” and nothing more.