As interesting as Collet-Serra's story is, there's simply nothing here that you won't find in other better evil children films in the library...
Comment
12/04/09
Orphan (2009)
55
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:135
Fresh:74
Rotten:61
Average Rating:5.5/10
Consensus: While it has moments of dark humor and the requisite scares, Orphan fails to build on its interesting premise and degenerates into a formulaic, sleazy horror/thriller.
Theatrical Release:Jul 24, 2009 Wide
Box Office: $41,472,886
Synopsis: The tragic loss of their unborn child has devastated Kate and John, taking a toll on both their marriage and Kate’s fragile psyche as she is plagued by nightmares and haunted by demons from her... [More]
Starring: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, CCH Pounder
Director: Jaume Collet-Sera
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Reviews for Orphan
Alas, in the end, it's not nasty enough.
12/01/09
Bad Seed-style horror movie is gory and ludicrous.
10/26/09
Orphan is not very good. At 90 minutes, it might have been amazing. At nearly two hours, it's tedious.
10/25/09
This is the rare fright flick that is actually grounded in some genuine human emotion.
10/24/09
For the most part, Esther is an entertaining and solid addition to the Evil Child canon.
10/22/09
...more concerned with producing cheap thrills and melodramatic effects than creating any sense of mystery or suspense.
10/20/09
David Johnson's script plays fair with red herrings before a devilish denouement with all the torque of a good twist. Esther doesn't just want to topple the Colemans' house of cards. She wants to torch it, and "Orphan" is gruesome, gripping material.
09/19/09
A difficult child that horror-loving parents will find hard to adopt as one of their own.
09/11/09
Something isn't quite working in the intended way when the audience's primary reaction for two-plus (!) hours is raucous laughter.
08/31/09
Orphan is as much a high-tension, frightening thriller as it is a straight-up horror flick, at least it is until it devolves into outright silliness in the final act.
08/28/09
a carefully staged deconstruction of our assumptions about horrorshows about preternaturally manipulative and malevolent children
08/25/09
"A superior entertainment."
08/23/09
Collet-Serra's film succeeds in being genuinely creepy, is commendably well acted by all concerned, and contains the best twist since The Crying Game.
08/21/09
Director Jaume Collet-Serra (House of Wax) endows this ugly mess with a slew of unintentional laughs, but not enough to repay the 123-minute time suck.
08/20/09
Top CriticThe movie amps up the tension to a laughable degree, using every cliché in the horror movie guidebook.
08/16/09
A pretty good little B-movie thriller.
08/15/09
Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther does her best with the material, but frankly the story lacks a strong central thesis about the nature of evil.
08/14/09
Audacious, silly fun.
08/13/09
Strange and nasty Esther is the consummate political player in a deadly game of unhappy families, in this fairly straightforward psychological thriller.
08/13/09
Latest News for Orphan
August 03, 2009:
Watch RT This Week on Current TV
This week, The Rotten Tomatoes Show will be looking at the movies that opened over the weekend, with help from you (the Rotten Tomatoes community), the Current TV community, and... More...
July 23, 2009:
Critics Consensus: Orphan Is Mixed Bag
This week at the movies, we've got an evil adoptee (Orphan, starring Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard), a battle of the sexes (The Ugly Truth, starring Katherine Heigl and... More...
July 23, 2009:
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As Harry Potter inches closer to graduating wizard school, the box office prince will face three new releases opening on Friday each targeting its own specific audience. Sony... More...
July 23, 2009:
Total Recall: Evil Movie Kids
Kids say the darndest things -- we all knew it even before Art Linkletter and Bill Cosby turned wisdom from the mouths of babes into TV comedy gold. But some of Hollywood's most... More...
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