Orphan: First Kill Review

Scare Value Award Winner – Best Twist

Orphan: First Kill review.

Free from hiding its lead characters big secret, Orphan: First Kill aims squarely at upping the insanity. It has a great, insane, twist of its own to play with. First Kill is the best kind of prequel. One that adds to the mythology and revels in the opportunity for fun.

New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.

Orphan: First Kill

Directed by William Brent Bell

Screenplay by David Coggeshall

Starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Styles and Rossif Sutherland

Orphan: First Kill Review

I would say that the end of Orphan made a sequel unlikely…but this franchise would find a way. The truth is making a prequel with a now adult Isabelle Fuhrman playing an even younger version of Esther, the psychotic, murdering adult dwarf, was simply a crazier idea. In the world of Orphan, that makes it the right idea.

Set two years before the events of Orphan, First Kill sees Leena escape from her mental institution and take the identity of a child (Esther) who has been missing for 4 years. This creates more problems than trying to hide her identity from a new family. These people know the real Esther. Having to fake conversations about past events puts Esther dangerously close to being found out. The private investigator hired to find the real Esther certainly has his doubts immediately.

Orphan arrived in 2009 sporting one of the wildest twists in horror history. Esther, the adopted daughter of the Coleman family, is a psychotic 33-year-old dwarf pretending to be a child. Orphan: First Kill is free from hiding that information for a final act twist. It makes our knowledge of it the impetus for a wild thrill ride through the eyes of Esther.

Orphan: First Kill has more up its sleeve than recreating Orphan with fresh eyes, however. It features a mid-movie twist of its own. A twist worthy of the franchise. We can’t talk about that twist here…but rest assured, like Orphan before it, First Kill is two different movies.

The movie is put in a difficult spot of having to now put Esther as the lead character. She’s an incredibly fun character, played wonderfully by Fuhrman again. The problem is that she’s also the villain. Orphan: First Kill is so crazy that you don’t really stop to think about it when Esther becomes the hero of its story. I use hero here as the person we are connected to…not as the person we root for. But the movie kind of forces you to. We are afraid her secret will be discovered this time. Think of how insane it is to be afraid of that. First Kill pulls it off.

The truth is, First Kill is even crazier than Orphan. Orphan played it all straight for most of the movie. You thought you were watching a basic evil child movie. Only after we learn Esther’s secret does the movie go from wild to insane. Here, we just jump right into the deep end of the crazy pool immediately. It’s makes watching First Kill feel like watching Orphan the second time. It’s also why the twist that radically changes this movie is so important. Recreating the first movie with the knowledge of who Esther is could have worn thin before too long. First Kill doesn’t let it.

Fuhrman looks older in First Kill than she did in Orphan. There was no way around it. The de-aging tactics in the movie are fantastic…but this is a now adult playing a character she last played as a child. And she’s supposed to be even younger. It just adds to the craziness. We know she’s an adult at this point anyway. There’s a fun symmetry in watching a child playing a secret adult in Orphan and then watching that same adult play an adult pretending to be a child in First Kill. At some point your franchise makes so many demented choices all your choices become right.

The different family dynamic fuels the first half of First Kill. The twist powers the second half. Both sides of the coin are wildly entertaining. Beats of the original movie are followed or explained throughout this prequel…but never in a way that does anything but enhance the overall world of the story. She still plays piano…she still paints…she’s still a murderous dwarf pretending to be a child.

I hope they make a dozen of these.

Scare Value

Letting viewers in on Esther’s secret from the start opens the door to a different kind of Orphan movie. We talked about rewatching the original movie after knowing the twist in our Orphan review. First Kill creates a new world around that idea. A world just crazy enough to match Esther.

4/5