I knew I was not in very good hands fairly early on in Orphan. In the film's opening scene, Kate Coleman (Vera Farmiga) suffers a gruesome nightmare about the stillborn birth of her daughter. The scene is a gruesome and pointless opening, but that's not what bothered me. What bothered me is what came afterward. Kate goes into the bathroom to calm her nerves after waking up from her dream, and the camera "stalks" her, almost as if the movie wants us to think something dangerous is sneaking up behind her. Of course, we're only two minutes into the thing, and the villain hasn't even shown up yet, so we know she's not in any danger. Who is the movie trying to kid? I also laughed when Kate opened the medicine cabinet door, and it made a deafening shriek of a squeak, its sound heavily intensified on the soundtrack. It's almost like the door knows it's in a horror movie.

It's an early warning that Orphan is not exactly going to be a subtle movie, but that couldn't even prepare me for how ludicrous and idiotic the film would eventually become. If this was just your standard "killer child" movie, like The Bad Seed, I could deal with it. But Orphan is a tacky, manipulative piece of trash that is not scary in the least. It made me squirm, but for all the wrong reasons. I was never scared or disturbed by the movie, I was restless from the film's overly long two hour running time and leisurely pace. The "shock" moments that are supposed to make us jump are heavy-handed and ham-fisted. And the film's final twist seems more like a cop out than a shocker. The ending is supposed to explain all the terrible things we've seen in the film, which skirt around the issues of pedophilia and child endangerment. Rather than tackle these issues head on, the movie gives us a "reason" at the end that is not only implausible, but also cheap.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. After the opening scene, we learn that Kate is a recovering alcoholic. Her husband, John (Peter Sarsgaard) tries his best to be supportive, but we can tell from early on that he's at his wit's end. The couple have two children - a little girl named Max (Aryana Engineer) who is deaf after an accident, and a son named Daniel (Jimmy Bennett). After the miscarriage of their last child, which still weighs heavily over the couple, Kate and John decide they should adopt. They head off to the local orphanage, where the kindly old nun, Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder), shows them many happy and rambunctious kids. But John is drawn to one little withdrawn girl sitting alone in a room, painting pictures. That girl is Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), a girl who is well-mannered, polite, and talented. Maybe a bit too well-mannered and polite. There seems to be something a little off about her. Maybe it's her deep Russian accent and her mature and mannered way of speaking, which makes her sound like a pre-adolescent James Bond villain. Even Sister Abigail eyes her suspiciously. But, Kate and John welcome the girl into their lives.

Esther comes across as a "golden child", even if she doesn't fit into the family all that well. While she bonds well with John and little Max, young Daniel is kind of creeped out by his new adopted sister, and Kate eventually grows some suspicions as well. The little tyke seems almost cunning and manipulative at times. And why does Esther always wear those ribbons around her neck and her wrists at all times? And why does she scream like she's being murdered when someone tries to remove them? Kate is concerned, but John thinks Kate is wrong. John is the kind of character who exists solely to be wrong throughout the movie, and not listen to reason even when the truth is staring him right in the face. When Esther starts to show some rather aggressive tendencies (she pushes a bully off the playground equipment), and Kate voices her concern, John just brushes her off. Something he'll keep on doing when Esther begins to move to murder. Her first victim is Sister Abigail, who pays a visit to the couple's home to tell them something she probably should have said back at the orphanage - People have a tendency to die and get hurt in strange accidents around the little girl. Her last parents died in an arson fire, although no arsonist was ever found or charged. As Abigail is driving back to the orphanage after sharing this information with Kate and John, little Esther stages a car accident then beats the woman to death with a hammer when she tries to escape.

The movie falls into a predictable pattern from that point on. Esther goes on a murderous rampage, wiping out anyone who upsets her or may know information about her past. Kate begins to fear for her life and the life of her children, but John continues to be oblivious to the obvious. Not even the fact that their son's treehouse spontaneously combusted in a gasoline fire with the boy inside it is enough to convince the dope. Orphan displays Esther's evil deeds in such a tactless and manipulative way, since almost all of her actions involve the other children. There's a scene where little Esther teaches Max how to play Russian Roulette with daddy's handgun. She also likes to take her new little sister skating on that particularly thin patch of ice, and threaten Daniel at knife point in the middle of the night. These scenes are supposed to shock and terrify us, but they only had me wondering what the parents of these child actors were thinking when they agreed to let them appear in this. Did they even read the script, or were they just so thrilled that their kids were going to be in a movie? The fact that two of the three main kids are experienced actors with past credits leads me to think the parents were thinking only of the money.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra (2005's House of Wax) frequently seems to be at war with himself, and unsure of what kind of movie he's making. Sometimes he seems to think he's making a psychological thriller, but the movie isn't quite smart enough for that, so he decides to turn to moldy slasher cliches. (Hint: The villain is never down for good the first time they go down.) During the film's final moments, Esther loses all manipulation, and goes into all-out monster mode, knocking out the power in the house, leaping out of shadows screaming with a knife, and becoming a nearly invincible killing machine. If the reveal of Esther's true identity killed what little integrity the movie had, then the final moments buried it in the ground. Ask yourself this question while you're watching the film's final 10 minutes - How did Kate get out of the hospital without anyone stopping her? I don't want to go too deep into spoiler territory, but the ending builds to such ludicrous levels that the only thing keeping me in my seat was seeing how much further it would go, and how many more cliches it would lift.
Despite it all, you can see a lot of talent went into the film. The performances are mostly strong, especially young Aryana Engineer, who brings a lot of sympathy to her character as the couple's deaf daughter. It's also well shot and uses its winter landscape to its advantage. But so what? At its core, Orphan is a joyless little movie that doesn't even manage to generate any real scares. It just makes you wonder what the filmmakers were thinking, and what Leonardo DiCaprio's name is doing on the credits as one of the film's producers?

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