Orphan: First Kill (2022)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Heir Aberrant

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Thanks to a clever flip of the script, some inventive filmmaking techniques, and another ghoulishly strong performance by Isabelle Fuhrman, this horror prequel surprisingly surpasses the original.

Art therapy instructor Anna (Gwendolyn Collins) takes a job at the SAARNE Institute, a psychiatric facility in Estonia. On her first day, their deadliest patient, Leena (Isabelle Fuhrman) escapes. Leena is said to be a 31-year-old woman with a gland disorder, making her appear ten years old. She finds the profile of a missing girl that fits her appearance and begins a new journey, impersonating "Esther," the daughter of the upper-class Albright family.

Her new "mother," Tricia (Julia Stiles), is a philanthropist, her "brother," Gunnar (Matthew Finlan), is a fencing champion, and her "father," Allen (Rossif Sutherland), is a successful painter. At first she simply plans to rob them and move on, but Allen's kindness toward her makes her want to stay. Unfortunately, not everything is as it seems.

Orphan: First Kill should not have been possible. The original Orphan was made when Fuhrman was twelve. She played the 33-year-old Esther, stuck in a nine-year-old's body, and pulled it off with supreme creepiness. Here she's 25, and should not be able to play the role anymore, but director William Brent Bell and his crew came up with camera angles, make-up, and lighting, as well as some VFX, to make her look almost the same. It helps, of course, that Fuhrman has the skill to pull this off.

The movie asks us to believe that she would stay at the Albright house due to her feelings for her "father," and it's a bit of a leap, but Fuhrman suggests how tenderly Esther might receive his kindness — and how she might hunger for more — and she bridges the gap.

Additionally, if Orphan: First Kill had been just another psycho-slasher movie, it wouldn't have been worth the bother, but the writers David Coggeshall, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, and Alex Mace cooked up a sly angle that tackles issues of white privilege, and asks us to question what a monster might really look like. The original movie was a dull slog through horror cliches, but this second entry, while still somewhat conventional, is worth adopting into one's video library.