A lot of families who are unable to have children naturally (as well as some that can) choose to adopt. My personal feeling on adoption is that it’s a wonderful thing and if you are noble enough to be able to love someone else’s child as if it were your own then you’re a great human being and there should be more of you in the world. The fact that so many children remain parentless throughout their youth is a tragedy that needs to be addressed. I am lucky enough to have two parents who I’m exceptionally close to, and one of them is not my “natural” mother, yet she has never made me feel like anything other than her own child and never treated me any differently or with any less love than she did her birth children. In a way, the difference has led me form an especially close bond with her, and all the traits I have that mirror hers firmly cements me on the side of “nurture” on the nature/nurture debate.
All this leads me to make clear the disclaimer that the below post is NOT making fun of adoption and my personal view is that more people should consider it.
That’s the serious part out of the way.
Last night I saw the film “Orphan”, which does for adoption what “The Amityville Horror” did for the housing market. Being a massive horror fan, a couple of equally enthusiastic horror junkies had recommended I check it out. And I’m glad that they did (although I’ll now blame the nightmares on them).
After their third child is stillborn, affluent couple Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga decide to adopt Esther, a nine-year-old they meet when visiting an all-girl orphanage. Seemingly charming and bright, after the initial highs of their first few weeks together wear off, events in their lives take a more sinister turn…
And that’s all I’ll say about the plot. I went into the film not knowing much more about it than I’ve written above, and enjoyed it all the more for it. Going back to the “classic” horror formula that I love, the film remembers that implied violence and the threat of violence are both always scarier than the violence itself. Unlike the torture porn of the Hostel series and Saw II through VII, the scares here come from the fact that Esther (played by a magnificent Isabelle Fuhrman) is genuinely creepy, and creates tension by notching up the freakiness of the events unfolding around the family.
Overall an extremely disconcerting and uncomfortable watch (and I mean uncomfortable in a good way, which all horror fans will understand). Whilst not a “scare-fest” the slow pace of the first half escalates extremely quickly in the second, with a couple of genuine “gut-punch” moments of suspense. The creepiness of Esther plays into the classic horror convention of the “other” being represented by a child, possibly executed best in The Omen and John Wyndham’s novel The Midwich Cuckoos.
If you’re a horror fan I can’t recommend this enough, however, returning to my original point, if you’re considering adopting a child of your own then stay as far away from this film as humanly possible.
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