Orphan Movie

Plot
Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) and John Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard) are experiencing strains in their marriage after Kate's third child - "Jessica" - was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is still recovering from a drinking habit that cost her her job. As a coping mechanism she has scattered Jessica's ashes in their around a white garden rose bush, with a plaque to remember her by. They adopt Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), a 9-year-old Russian girl they had met, from the local orphanage. While Kate and John's deaf-mute daughter Max (Aryana Engineer) embraces Esther almost immediately, their son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is less welcoming. The family tries to make Esther feel like part of their family, but once again things exactly do not work out too well.

Kate grows suspicious when Esther, who watched John and her have sex, expresses far more knowledge of sex and its slang than would be expected for a child her age. Not long after Esther arrives, she pushes a schoolmate down a playground slide, who had picked on her, breaking her ankle. Max saw Esther shove the girl, but covers for Esther by saying that the girl "slipped". However, she is further alarmed when Sister Abigail (C.C.H Pounder), the head of the orphanage, warns her and John about Esther's tendency to be around when things go wrong. Esther overhears this and later kills Sister Abigail with a hammer to the head. She convinces Max (puts a gun to her head) to help her hide the body and the hammer. Daniel sees Esther and Max descending from his treehouse from behind a rock, not knowing they hid the hammer there. Later that night, Esther threatens to cut off Daniel's genitals if he tells anyone what he saw.

Kate is told by the orphanage that they cannot find any record of the Russian orphanage Esther came from. However, John does not believe her, despite continued ominous behavior by Esther. That night, Esther deliberately picks flowers for Kate that are from Jessica's plant and Kate pushes her to the ground. Later, Esther breaks her own arm in John's vice and convinces John that Kate broke it in the scuffle from earlier. On Esther's first day back at school, she slips Kate's SUV into neutral, nearly killing Max. Badly shaken, Kate buys two bottles of wine, but at the last minute pours one of them down the drain and leaves the other full.

Kate learns that Esther was housed at a mental institution in Estonia called the Saarnu Institute, but when she expresses misgivings to John, he and her counselor think that Kate is relapsing into her drinking habit. After John produces the other bottle Kate bought the night before, he threatens to leave her unless she gets help.
Daniel learns of the hammer from Max and decides to get it and go to the police. However, Esther sets the treehouse on fire, intending to get rid of the evidence and kill Daniel. Daniel escapes by falling out of the tree, and gets a severe neck injury. Esther tries to finish him off by smashing a brick over his head, but Max shoves her out of the way just in time. Esther again tries to kill him at the hospital by smothering him with a pillow and briefly unhooking his respirator. Doctors rush into the room and manage to save Daniel. Kate, knowing what happened, furiously slaps Esther and knocks her down. Kate is immediately subdued and sedated by doctors.
That night, Esther tries to seduce a drunk and sad John. John realizes Kate was telling the truth all along and threatens to call the orphanage. Esther, angry and hurt at being spurned, ransacks her room and later stabs John. Max witnesses this and hides in her laundry hamper.

As Kate is coming out of sedation, she gets a call from the Saarnu Institute's director, Dr. Värava (Karel Roden), who reveals that Esther isn't a 9-year-old girl at all, but a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer. She has hypopituitarism, a disorder that stunted her physical growth, and has spent most of her life posing as a little girl. The doctor tells Kate that Leena is dangerously psychopathic, and Kate protect her family. Kate rushes home, only to find John dead on the floor. Leena shoots Kate in the arm before she goes to search for Max.

Their chase takes them outside to a frozen pond, where Kate and Leena struggle as Esther attempts to stab Kate. Max is watching the struggle from above the pond. She maneuvers herself down the hill to grab the gun that was dropped during the chase, with the intent of shooting Leena. She misfires and shoots the ice instead, which cracks and both Kate and Leena fall in. Kate crawls out of the hole, followed by Leena, who begs for her life, addressing Kate as "Mommy" while hiding a knife behind her back. Kate angrily responds that she is not her mother and kicks Leena in the face, breaking her neck and sending her back into the pond.

However, in Orphan's DVD which includes an Alternate Ending, shows Leena is still alive, with a broken and bloody face, masking herself with her own cosmetics to create Esther again in Coleman's house. Then after she finishes with her face, she goes downstairs and is rescued by the cops who investigate the house.It is implied that Leena kills both Kate and Max and hides all the truth that had been collected by Kate.

Production
The real life Alma College in St. Thomas, Ontario, which served as the Saarne Institute in the movie.The film was shot in Canada, in the cities of Toronto, Port Hope and Montreal.

Controversy
The film's content, depicting a murderous adopted person, was not well received by the adoption community.The controversy caused filmmakers to change a line in one of their trailers from "It must be difficult to love an adopted child as much as your own," to "I don’t think Mommy likes me very much.Melissa Fay Greene of The Daily Beast commented:

"The movie Orphan comes directly from this unexamined place in popular culture. Esther’s shadowy past includes Eastern Europe (small country named Estonia) she appears normal and sweet, but quickly turns violent and cruel, especially toward her mother. These are clichés. This is the baggage with which we saddle abandoned, orphaned, or disabled children given a fresh start at family life.

Reception
Critical reaction to Orphan has been mixed, with the film earning a rating of 55% (43% among the Top Critics) on Rotten Tomatoes where the consensus is: "While it has moments of dark humor and the requisite scares, Orphan fails to build on its interesting premise and degenerates into a formulaic, sleazy horror/thriller". It also earned a 42 out of 100 on Metacritic.Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave Orphan 3½ stars out of 4, writing: "You want a good horror film about a child from hell, you got one." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle also gave a positive review, saying: "Orphan provides everything you might expect in a psycho-child thriller, but with such excess and exuberance that it still has the power to surprise."

Todd McCarthy, of Variety was less impressed, writing: "Teasingly enjoyable rubbish through the first hour, Orphan becomes genuine trash during its protracted second half." Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, "Actors have to eat like the rest of us, if evidently not as much, but you still have to wonder how the independent film mainstays Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard ended up wading through Orphan and, for the most part, not laughing.” Owen Gleiberman of entertainment weekly gave the film a D+ score, saying, "Orphan isn't scary — it's garish and plodding.”

Openly (and at times vehemently) negative reviews are abundant: from "galling, distasteful trash" (Eric D. Snider) to "old-fashioned and trashy horror flick" (Emanuel Levy) and "relentlessly bad", albeit "entertaining" (Rob Vaux).According to Dennis Schwartz of Ozus' World Movie Reviews, "The problem with Orphan isn't merely that the film is idiotic--it's that it's also sleazy, formulaic and repellant.”And according to Keith Phipps from The A.V Club, "If director Jaume Collet-Serra set out to make a parody of horror-film clichés, he succeeded brilliantly."

Although the film received mixed reviews, Isabelle Fuhrman's performance was acclaimed and positively received. Emanuel Levy said of Fuhrman "acquites herself with a strong performance, affecting a rather convincing Russian accent and executing sheer evil with an admirable degree of calm and earnestness.” Todd McCarthy proclaims that Fuhrman (as well as Bennett and Engineer) is terrific and that she "makes Esther calmly beyond reproach even when faced with monumental evidence against her, and has the requisite great evil eye.” Mick LaSalle continues in that Fuhrman "steals the show" and that she "injects nuance into this portrayal, as well as an arch spirit.” And as said by Roger Ebert, she "is not going to be convincing as a nice child for a long, long time.”

The film was the #4 film at the box office for its opening weekend, making $12.77 million total, behind G Force, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Ugly Truth respectively. As of September 9, 2009 the film has grossed a total of $53,243,687

Home media
Video. It was released on DVD & Blu-ray in the UK on November 27 by Optimum Releasing. Just Orphan was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 27, 2009 in the US byWarner Home includes Alternate Scenes and Footage, and one Alternate Ending which marketed in the DVD cover. In the Alternate Ending, showing the reverse situation of Esther and Kate in climax, but rather than implied only.