If Paramount+ viewers haven’t paused or given up on “Orphan: First Kill” by the second act, they might be shocked by a truly bonkers midway twist. This jarring development completely upends a film that had, up until that point, seemed like a milquetoast reheat of the first film. It’s a shame that most of the film’s creativity seems siphoned off in other directions rather than sticking the landing for its intriguing plot gambit.
“First Kill” takes place two years prior to the events of the 2009 original, yet still casts Isabelle Fuhrman as the spine-chilling Esther. This parentless child might present as a pre-teen but has an internal body clock that reads much older, as the first film revealed, and a psychopathic mind that’s well-honed for familial destruction and fulfillment of desire. Simply put, it stretches believability, tasking Fuhrman with appearing two years younger over a decade later. Every shot in the film bends over backward with cinematic trickery trying to disguise that she’s now a full-fledged adult. It’s incredibly distracting and damaging to the film to accommodate her development.
The visuals are that much more prominent, too, because the plot mechanics do not hold as much thrill. “Orphan: First Kill” takes the “Rogue One” approach to storytelling as it tries to captivate an audience while building toward a predetermined conclusion they already know is coming. The two major events depicted in the film, Esther’s escape from an Estonian psych ward and the fiery deaths of her first adoptive American family, are well-established in its predecessor. At the very least, director William Brent Bell (helmer of “The Boy” series) turns the first big moment into a nice, self-contained twenty-minute prologue that revs up the film’s engine for terror. It would have been the perfect addition to the “Orphan” Blu-Ray release as an extra.
When it comes to taking out her first family, the meddling machinations of Esther don’t quite hold the same intrigue because it follows the exact same pattern as how she would later rip a home apart. Familiarity and templatization are the lifeblood of franchise entertainment, not just in horror but also in comedy and action. Still, most offshoots at least try to disguise the shamelessness of their xeroxed structure.
“Orphan: First Kill” may differ in a few details, but the overarching ends remain the same – down to the very order in which Esther methodically eliminates her opposition. First, make anyone investigating her mysterious origins disappear (here, Hiro Kanagawa’s Detective Donnan). Then, neutralize suspicious siblings (Matthew Finlan’s Gunnar). Next, discredit the mother (Julia Stiles’ Tricia) as hysterical in the wake of her grief over a lost child. Finally, seduce the father (Rossif Sutherland’s Allen).
The aforementioned twist, too bonkers to spoil, yet too big to ignore, at first appears like a needed Hail Mary pass to shake up a predictable playbook. The journey from “inspired” to “insipid” with this development, however, is remarkably brief. Only a deliciously scenery-chewing Julia Stiles shows herself willing to commit to something slightly different for the series. She alone is not enough to save “Orphan: First Kill” from staleness. Absent a more committed tone shift from the cast or crew, the big moment instead feels like a horror franchise jumping the shark.
But then again, perhaps thirteen years is enough time for the memory of the original “Orphan” to fade. If the devious manipulations of Esther do not remain fresh in the mind, they might still bedevil. If viewers have forgotten the raw rage of Vera Farmiga’s gaslit mother raging to have her observations validated, the absence of a more emotional tether to the story might not bother. Yet, even the faintest recollection of Jaume Collet-Serra’s engrossing, enraging 2009 film ought to be enough to spot a pale imitation. “Orphan: First Kill” only merits viewing if it is a viewer’s first exposure to the series. For anyone else, a rewatch of the original ought to do – it holds up remarkably well on repeat viewing. [C-]
“Orphan: First Kill” arrives on Paramount+ on August 19.
