ORPHAN: FIRST KILL

ORPHAN: FIRST KILL is a prequel to the 2009 horror movie, ORPHAN, about a 31-year-old female dwarf who looks like a child and poses as a missing child to a Connecticut family, but the mother and son have a deep, dark secret that leads to a fiery climax. ORPHAN: FIRST KILL does a good job with production details and has some good performances, but the main characters aren’t heroic, so the story is ultimately unsatisfying and has a strong humanist worldview with extreme violence, lots of strong foul language and other objectionable content.

ORPHAN: FIRST KILL is an occasionally effective, but disappointing, prequel to ORPHAN. It traces Leena Flammer’s path from a psychiatric patient to “becoming” Esther Albright, and how she came to the Catholic orphanage where she’s found at the opening of ORPHAN. Leena is a 31-year-old woman with a rare hormonal condition that causes physical dwarfism and keeps her looking as youthful as a child. Leena takes advantage of a music therapist’s visit to her Estonian psychiatric hospital and escapes the facility with plans to flee the country.

Leena researches missing children on the web and sees that Esther Albright from Connecticut in America has been missing for four years. Leena mimics Esther’s age and appearance and convinces Estonian police that she’s the lost Esther. They return Leena to her “family,” Allen and Tricia Albright, and their son, Gunnar. Allen heartily welcomes her, but Tricia and Gunnar are more skeptical. An unexpected twist reveals the reason for that, and the tragic tale spirals toward a fiery climax.

ORPHAN: FIRST KILL is much different in tone, feeling, underlying themes, and the story’s overall nature, from the original movie. In attention to details, the prequel does an excellent job connecting key elements of Leena/Esther’s character development to their development in the 2009 movie. FIRST KILL also does a good job tying up all the loose ends in the first movie, such as how Leena learned the art of blacklight painting, how she came to know Jimmy Durante’s version of the classic 1930s song, “The Glory of Love,” and whether she was really an arsonist.

However, the central problem in ORPHAN: FIRST KILL remains the story itself. People who saw the first ORPHAN movie should expect to see a tragic tale, but the character development of the mother and son will be disappointing. In the 2009 movie, there’s a good versus evil dynamic that keeps viewers invested in the plight and fate of its characters. The prequel, though, turns but to be a struggle of two evil characters versus another evil character. Also, the one character in the story who’s really good is easily duped and manipulated, and so is eventually overcome by evil. Thus, there’s really no one to cheer for in ORPHAN: FIRST KILL. This destroys any sympathy viewers might have for the Albright family. The fact that ORPHAN: FIRST KILL really has no protagonist weakens the movie mightily. That said, Isabelle Fuhrman delivers a talented reprisal of her role as Leena/Esther, and Julia Stiles is especially good in her role as the mother, Tricia.

The disappointing characters and conflict in ORPHAN: FIRST KILL point to a strong postmodern humanist worldview that accompanies the movie’s unsatisfying story. Most of the characters display overtly immoral attitudes where they lie, cheat, steal, and murder to achieve their desired goals. Violence is a normal and acceptable practice for them, and the movie’s often extreme bloodletting is consonant with this assumption. ORPHAN: FIRST KILL has an almost complete lack of redeeming characters and themes, with lots of strong, crude foul language and some lewd content. Ultimately, therefore, the movie is abhorrent and receives MOVIEGUIDE®’s lowest acceptability rating.