It took me WAY too long to see Orphan. Released a week before The Collector (check out my review of that one here), I made the mistake of seeing that God awful piece of crap instead of seeing this smart, beautifully-filmed suspense thriller (it’s hard for me to call this a horror film). Orphan is an example of the varying range for Dark Castle Entertainment, which started as a company specifically to remake old William Castle films, Tales from the Crypt-style, and has actually moved past making “fun” horror films (I think the last one was House of Wax) and more into the thriller territory. The last Dark Castle horror film, The Reaping, was so awful that I regretted watching every minute of it.
Trailers for Orphan give the impression that it’s a 2009-edition of The Good Son, replacing Macauly Culkin with Isabelle Fuhrman. A crazy kid who’s just born bad, and kills/beats up other kids. Actually, the film ends up being much more than that and, even though it’s not supernatural (I’m not ruining anything – there’s not even a hint of the supernatural throughout the entire film), still manages to bring something new to the “scary kid” genre.
Read the rest of my review after the jump!
