A seemingly happy married couple experiences the tragedy of a stillborn child. As a way to cope with their loss, they decide to adopt a Russian orphan named Esther from an orphanage. The girl wears black ribbons around her neck and wrists, has a strange fondness for vintage dresses reminiscent of “grandma’s attic,” and plays Tchaikovsky on the piano with remarkable skill for a nine-year-old. However, she behaves demurely and modestly, initially raising no concerns about her character in the eyes of her new parents, Kate and John. The couple’s younger daughter, Max, a deaf six-year-old, accepts her new sister without, well, words. In contrast, their older son, Daniel, entering the turbulent phase of puberty, throws tantrums, insisting that she’s not his sister and demanding they return her. As for Esther… Esther initially just blinks and smiles. But then she picks up a stone and, with professional detachment, finishes off a pigeon wounded by Daniel. “To end its suffering.” Later, she pushes a classmate off a slide. “To stop her teasing.” Then, she pits her new parents against each other. “To keep them on their toes.”
It’s important to clarify from the outset: this isn’t another horror story about paranormal evil seeping into the world from the depths of hell. “Orphan” is a thriller in the best traditions of “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” (1991): sure, sulfur is all well and good, but when it comes to destroying evidence, kerosene still works more effectively. On the plot of a cuckoo chick destroying the nest into which it was placed, debut screenwriter David Johnson [III] has carefully built up the substance of psychology: a father who doesn’t doubt that nuns from the orphanage could have taught the girl the word “fuck”, frightened children who know everything but remain silent – one under threat of being shot, the other under threat of castration, and a traumatized mother all around – a recovering alcoholic who suffers from terrible suspicions but can’t prove anything to anyone.
The Core of Suspense
However, in a thriller, the main thing isn’t kerosene, substance, or even psychology.
The key, as Hitchcock proved once and for all, is the speed at which the doorknob turns. And director Jaume Collet-Serra, who overcame the senseless looseness of his debut “House of Wax” from 2004, suddenly took hold of himself, or perhaps a metronome, and made a truly effective thriller in this sense. So effective that when we finally learn why the strange girl played Tchaikovsky so well (the only truly novel moment in the film), it no longer matters, and the answer to the prosaic question of what’s in the hands of the person behind the door suddenly becomes more important than all the psychopathological reasons why that person is there.