Orphan: First Kill - This Horror Prequel is NOT What Little Girls Are Made Of

By Jim Slotek

Rating: C

Tech-enhanced onscreen de-aging has always open to derision. But these days, it’s almost asking for it.

Earlier this year, for example, there was Aline, Valérie Lemercier’s weird bio-pic in which the filmmaker digitally played Celine Dion at every age from 5-50.

Now there’s Orphan: First Kill, the prequel to Jaume Collet-Serra’s taut s effective 2009 thriller Orphan, in which then 11-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman played a mysterious, sexually inappropriate and menacing Eastern European orphan with a secret her adoptive parents are slow to grasp.

Isabelle Fuhrman in Orphan: First Kill. No, really! I’m eight years old!

Now 25 years old, Fuhrman is asked in Orphan: First Kill to play a character even younger than in the original. The filmmakers claim they used “minimal” CGI, plus make-up and body doubles to turn a young woman into a supposed eight-year-old child.

The “reveal” in the original film is the full premise of Orphan: First Kill from the opening scene onward. Esther, the Estonian orphan, is really a murderous thirtysomething adult with a rare form of dwarfism that makes her look like a child.

Which means in Orphan, Fuhrman was a child actor playing an adult who’s pretending to be a child. In Orphan: First Kill, she’s an adult actor playing an adult who’s pretending to be a child.

It’s a ludicrous, unconvincing effect, and a distraction throughout this suspense-less prequel by William Brent Bell.

But what if they’d cast an actual child actor who uncannily resembled the young Fuhrman? Would Orphan: First Kill have been a better movie?

In a word, no. Collet-Serra’s film was built around a secret even the audience didn’t know. Orphan was a framework for wondering and guessing what little Esther’s secret might be, and what plans she might have for her American adoptive parents (played then by Vera Farmiga – who is practically a scream-queen these days - and Peter Sarsgaard).

Orphan: First Kill has few secrets and therefore little suspense. We meet Esther, then known as Leena, in an Estonian psychiatric hospital where she is considered a dangerous patient. She escapes, leaving a trail of blood, and somehow contrives to turn up as a missing child in the U.S., returned to her wealthy family after four years.

During that time, the missing Esther has apparently learned to draw and play piano and has a pronounced accent. The charade is ludicrous, and only seems to fool the dad (Rossif Sutherland), who wants it to be true the most. Everyone from the mom (Julia Stiles), to the teenage brother (Matthew Finlan), to the cop on the case (Hiro Kanagawa), to the child psychiatrist (Samantha Walkes) all sense something “wrong” with her.

There is at least one curveball thrown into this by-the-numbers coming-to-America story. This squeaky clean community has secrets of its own, and Esther ultimately must face at least one more psycho before going “missing” again.

There are moments where director Bell seems to be positioning Esther as an anti-hero, which would have been interesting. But it’s not a path to which he commits, and it’s back to bloody business as usual.

The fact that this is a prequel drains even more suspense from the movie’s resolution. Whatever peril she faces now, we know she’ll turn up again. We’ve already seen it.

Orphan: First Kill. Directed by William Brent Bell. Starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles and Rossif Sutherland. Available for digital purchase, Friday, August 19.