Second. Best
‘Orphan’ meets its match with a prequel that overshadows it, thanks to a bonkers twist and a quote-ready script.
Orphan: First Kill
Director: William Brent Bell • Writer: David Coggeshall, based on the screenplay by Alex Mace
Starring: Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles, Rossif Sutherland, Hiro Kanagawa, Mathew Finlan, Samantha Walkes
USA/Canada • 1hr 39mins
Opens Hong Kong September 1 • IIB
Grade: B-
Everyone’s favourite psychotic, homicidal, hypopituitaric Estonian adult orphan is back. Yup. Even though Leena Klammer (Isabelle Fuhrman) took a boot to the face and drowned in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Orphan producers have found a way to resurrect her. Orphan hit theatres in 2009 with middling fanfare, but by the time all was said and done it had developed a devout (now) cult following and made Fuhrman, who was around 13 when Orphan came out, a minor horror legend. Despite catching flack for demonising 1) Eastern Europe and 2) adoption, it grossed four times its budget in cinemas and earned all important horror cred among aficionados. Naturally, that means “Franchise!”, to hell with the fact the main character is dead. Welcome to Orphan: First Kill.
Taking the reins this time is William Brent Bell, whose CV suggest serious hackery: The Devil Inside, the possession mockumentary best known for pissing people off by ending with a title card directing them to a website; the moderately creepy The Boy and the sequel, Brahms: The Boy II, which proceeded to shit all over the first one; and Separation, basically a divorce drama juiced with some ghosts. That would bode poorly were it not for writer David Coggeshall’s utterly lunatic script that, after a plodding opening act, boards the express Crazytrain straight to Camptown and never looks back. This shit’s hilarious, and 100% a love-it-or-hate-it affair.
New family, new grift
First Kill is that most reliable of franchise extenders, an origin story, and so we start at the Saarne Institute in Estonia in 2007 where Leena is incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane. She’s plotting an escape, and finds it when a new art therapist starts work, and a prison guard is so horned up (a staple of horror cinema) he thinks going into Leena’s room/cell is a good idea. Before you can say “long con” Leena has reinvented herself as Esther Albright, the missing daughter of an ultra-wealthy Connecticut family and is on her way to a reunion in the US. The film follows the same pattern as Orphan, and so suffers from familiarity and predictability. Dad Allen (Kiefer’s brother, Rossif Sutherland) is smitten, big brother Gunnar (Matthew Finlan) is suspicious, and mom Tricia (Julia Stiles) is trying to keep the peace. Also suspicious? The cop, Donnan (Hiro Kanagawa), who’s been investigating Esther’s disappearance. He has an evidence wall and home fingerprint lab to prove it. Just as First Kill seems to be settling in for some formulaic tedium, relying on fans’ good will, Coggeshall drops a pair of bombs for a hard reset. And, whooo, boy.
Practising the f-word in her head
So, so dead
To suggest the less you know about Orphan: First Kill the better is an understatement. The plot developments are best experienced blind, but let’s just say the film flirts with being this year’s Malignant. There’s a fine line between STOOPID and camp, and more than a few people are going to come down on the side of stupid. But there’s also something subversively, gleefully goofy about First Kill that demands respect. In a genre that trades in convention and doesn’t usurp those conventions often enough it’s a welcome bit of defiant sass. Bell demonstrates a bit of formal flair for the first time in ever, so what if it’s a bit on the nose (lots of mirrors and double images and so on). But it’s Stiles who picks up the film like a bag of loot and absolutely steals it – including from Fuhrman (who at an adult height now requires risers, body doubles and forced perspective to make her seem childlike). Stiles chomps scenery and drops F-bombs in all the film’s best lines with aplomb, and her delight in bringing Tricia to OTT life is infectious. Without her there’s no point whatsoever to Orphan: First Kill’s existence, and no way is it better than the original. She single-handedly makes it the year’s ripest guilty pleasure. More Stiles, please. — DEK