Reviews
GROWING PAINS: A Spoiler-Filled Review of ‘Orphan: First Kill’
Isabelle Fuhrman’s return to the role of Esther is full of curveballs and whiplashes of horror fun. In my first Orphan review, I asked if anybody had asked for this film to happen. Was it worth it? Did this movie need to be made? Yes. Emphatically, yes. I had a lot of preconceived notions and thoughts about how this movie would be a snooze-worthy rehash of Jaume Collet-Seura’s work. Still, I am happy to eat my humble pie and say that entering the third act of this film, I was COMPLETELY and UTTERLY incorrect. This movie has a rough start, but it is very, VERY good, and has a twist I didn’t see coming at all.
My spoiler-free review: it’s unreasonably good for a sequel to a 13-year-old movie; not perfect, but pretty great if you’re not looking for straight-laced, hair-raising horror. If you liked the first one a lot, you’ll probably like this. Don’t watch this if you haven’t seen the first because it will kill everything fun about the original. Alright, everybody cleared out? Good, onto the
SPOILERS AHEAD
Yes, once again, it’s the classic story of a young girl who is a grown woman with dwarfism, turned con artist, turned serial killer. Tale as old as time, I know. But that tale is being told with a fun spin on it.
In the directing chair this time is William Brent Bell, director for both of The Boy movies. Honestly, his directing isn’t anything to write home about, with its occasionally poorly composed shots and focus issues. Still, it does serve to fulfill the illusion they’re trying to pull off by making the 5’3 Fuhrman look a foot shorter (even if there are some funny shots meant to show off “Hey, she makes a convincing kid, right? We did good, huh?”).
There’s some wonky editing at points, like with the simulated one take early on, but it works all in all. Cinematographer Karim Hussain of Possessor fame makes some pretty good lighting choices, especially with Esther’s first meeting with an art therapist at the asylum she’s locked up in; I can appreciate the novel use of some flashing red emergency lights giving you glimpses of the tiny terror.
And when it comes to selling the illusion, we must address the makeup and costuming, as Doug Morrow and the rest of the makeup unit’s work is stellar in creating a charming, practical look for Fuhrman. While it’s occasionally funny looking, I prefer it to any clunky attempts to digitally de-age Fuhrman that would have been employed by a lesser crew.
Regarding the structure of the film, the intro sequence is pretty good since it drops any pretense of us not knowing about the first film, but that welcome wears out. The first half of the movie is regrettably where it feels much more like a retread of the 2009 film than its own entity. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT let that drive you away searching for a new movie to watch; it’s just something I must warn you about. This all changes around the 50-minute mark.
In a returning performance, Isabelle Fuhrman isn’t as genuinely frightening as she was in the original. Still, I think that has a lot to do with the plot structure less than her ability to be scary. Esther, as a threat feels a little sillier this time around as a villain you love-to-hate, and angles on her as a sociopath con man who happens to have killing as a side hustle. She’s very mustache twirly when no one is around, with a full suiting up montage to her own piano music, and it’s very fun.
As far as the other performers go, the highlight is Julia Stiles, who at first seems like she’s treating this with a much more serious performance than it deserves, with Tricia mirroring Farmiga’s grounded character from the first film and sounding dire and dour all the time…
But then the whole world of this film goes batshit insane.
The bold choice to turn her from a protagonist to a deuteragonist who is just as mean-spirited and evil as Esther made me love this movie and flip from mildly bored to thoroughly entertained. Matthew Finlan’s Gunnar as her conspirator isn’t anything special with clunky line deliveries and dialogue, but his demise is especially enjoyable.
As far as the other performances go, Esther’s newfound father, Allen is flat feeling against the exceptional Tricia, but he’s doing the best he can with the crumbs he’s allotted. The character of Detective Donnan is kind of just a lurking cop gargoyle with a preternatural amount of insight on Esther being evil. Still, he makes the perfect red herring as Esther’s would-be nemesis in the little dose we get of him.
I wouldn’t mind seeing this become a low-budget yearly franchise, just going through the families she terrorized on her way through America. You know, before eventually getting kicked into a frozen lake.
BOTTOMLINE: The film doesn’t just avoid the pitfall of being a safe, predictable sequel; it does a triple backflip over the pit for extra style and doesn’t overstay its welcome. This is a solid “must-watch” addition to your docket of movies for this weekend.
You can watch Orphan: First Kill on Paramount+!
There are countless subgenres within subgenres for horror, and one that feels underutilized is workplace horror. Unless you’re one of the lucky few, most people wake up at some point during the day, go to work, and then come home. It’s one of the few things in life that’s nearly unavoidable. While there are countless real-life examples of workplace violence, seeing exaggerated forms of it in film can still be fun. When I pitched covering The Belko Experiment for this month, I actually thought I was pitching Joe Lynch’s Mayhem. I soon found out how incorrect I had been, but figured I’d go along with it anyway.
Mike Milch (John Gallagher Jr.) and 79 of his coworkers are locked inside the towering building they come to work in every day in Bogotá, Colombia. They’re given simple instructions: murder two coworkers within the next half hour. When they fail that task, coworkers’ heads start blowing up left and right. When they’re given the next task, kill 30 people in two hours, they take it…a little more seriously.
The Belko Experiment’s Brutal Premise Sets Up High Stakes
Written by James Gunn and directed by Wolf Creek creator Greg McLean, The Belko Experiment is a painfully by-the-numbers film that offers little more than a handful of entertaining kills. Its futile attempts at commentary regarding work/life balance or just how bad “faceless” upper management is fall so flat it’s comical. Nothing like multi-millionaire James Gunn telling me how awful it is to have to work a real job for a living. Great work. And its one-dimensional characters do little more than create a slight sigh of relief when they’re dispatched without regard.
A singular attempt at cleverness is broached from the beginning when we see a colony of ants in an ant farm on someone’s desk. Oh, look at that, these workers are nothing more than mindless ants! But any attempt at following that slightly clever idea is quickly thrown away. At one point, Barry Norris (Tony Goldwyn), the big boss in the office, attempts to group up who should and shouldn’t be killed; who has the most value outside of work. Gunn had the perfect opportunity to make Barry a deep and more sinister antagonist. If Barry had grouped people into sets from most to least profitable for the company, we would have something. It would show that Barry is a forward-thinking villain who is trying to suck up to the people who get paid even MORE than him!
Missed Opportunities for a Smarter Corporate Villain
I’ll do you one better. After all of that, what if the bad guys that Barry recruited to help him cull his subordinates realized they were just pawns in the game of Big Business? So then they attempt to repent by killing Barry in the hopes that they can find a common means of escape from this hell? Why is there zero attempt at making an interesting story other than this shitty, watered-down Battle Royale with people we don’t give a shit about? Instead of anything interesting, we’re just given a group of baddies who try to get into the security office’s gun safe. The only reason we’re slightly scared of the “bad guys” is because they’re bad guys.
The only slightly interesting performances we get are from David Dastmalchian and Adria Arjona, even if it might be a fluke. As someone who is a fan of Greg McLean and the Wolf Creek series, something just felt disconnected about nearly every aspect of The Belko Experiment. I’ve brought it up before that sometimes it’s okay to have a film that doesn’t tell a great story as long as the kills can carry some of the weight. But to say this film has a story is laughable, and that carries over to how flat this film looks.
Skip The Belko Experiment and Watch Mayhem Instead
It’s weird how sour this film left me. When I was watching it, I found myself grimacing at some of the kills. And I didn’t vehemently dislike it as much as this review would suggest. But as I sat there and thought longer, I just couldn’t wrap my head around what anyone sees in this. Mayhem is an all-around better film that tackles this same subject but in a much better way. So if you ever decide to sit down and watch The Belko Experiment, maybe go watch Mayhem on Shudder instead.
Would it be a month of coverage on Horror Press if I didn’t bring up at least one aughts film? I know the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, is shaking his fists at the sky and cursing the fact that he approved me covering The Hitcher. Of all the remakes that were so pervasive throughout the aughts, The Hitcher is one that slipped completely under my radar. And that’s a damn shame. It wouldn’t be until I found a DVD copy at Bookoff that I finally got the opportunity to watch it. Hot damn, the critics really got it wrong here.
The Hitcher: A Road Trip Turned Nightmare
Jim Halsey (Zachary Knighton) and his girlfriend Grace Andrews (Sophia Bush) are on a road trip to Lake Havasu in Jim’s gorgeous Oldsmobile 442. An unfortunate run-in with a mysterious hitchhiker, John Ryder (Sean Bean), Jim and Grace find themselves in a fight for life and death. Only, John isn’t their only concern. With the 5-0 hot on their tails, Jim and Grace must escape from a psychopathic man with a death wish and the hot-tempered, hot-faced Lieutenant Esteridge (Neal McDonough). As the odometer grows, so does the body count.
The Hitcher is one of those remakes that does not have the approval of the original’s lead, Rutger Hauer. Which is astounding to me. Sure, the original is good. But it doesn’t set itself apart from the crowd too much. Rutger Hauer’s John is slightly more reserved, and while he has an edge to him, I don’t necessarily find him overly menacing. (Don’t kill me.) Sean Bean’s John Ryder, on the other hand, is furiously terrifying. There’s no question that there are tons of issues with the Platinum Dunes remake, though, for me, the pros significantly outweigh the cons.
Jim Halsey Falls Flat
The biggest issue is the character of Jim Halsey. I love how the roles of Jim and Grace are swapped from the original film. It brings an updated, modern edge to the film and is a great way to throw audiences who have seen the original. Though I can imagine the hyper-masculine fans of the original were not too happy with that. When it was decided to swap the roles of the characters, it seems like any character depth for Jim was thrown out of the window. I think Zachary Knighton is a wonderful actor who does the best with what he has, but he doesn’t have enough to work with. Writers Eric Red, Jake Wade Wall, and Eric Bernt updated the film with tons of epic scenarios and moments, while seemingly forgetting to make the supposed lead of the film interesting.
On top of cardboard Jim, the inciting police incident just feels very forced. Grace runs into a diner, covered in blood, after she and Jim found a family butchered by John. Someone from the diner calls the police, which leads to Jim and Grace being arrested and charged with murder. Whether or not that’s supposed to be commentary on rural police doesn’t matter because it completely fails to do anything other than forcibly push the story forward.
Besides that? I hate to say, but I don’t have many issues with The Hitcher.
Soundtrack and Atmosphere: A High-Octane Experience
First and foremost, The Hitcher’s soundtrack is incredible. We start the film with Move Along by The All-American Rejects. Talk about a shot of adrenaline. And the greatest needle drop in all of aughts horror history is Nine Inch Nails’s Closer during the film’s most wild car chase. It’s hard not to get lost in this film when the music kicks in.
What really sells this film is how intensely they handle the violence and the film’s gorgeous chase scenes. It’s no Death Proof, but these scenes are miles above the Fast movies that were out at this time. In a day and age where chase scenes are overly produced, badly edited, and just plain boring, The Hitcher manages to infuse horror and action in a way that probably won’t be seen again. Watching films like The Hitcher makes me sad for the state of modern cinema. The Hitcher wasn’t made to win scores of Oscars; it was made by people passionate about telling a badass, harrowing story (minus Jim). And they greatly excel at that.
The Hitcher Is a Misunderstood Cult Favorite
The Hitcher falls in line with my running theory of post-9/11 ultra violence. We were a nation scared of what happened, what was happening, and what seemed to be on the horizon–The Hitcher bottles that fear and anger, packaging it into a nasty piece of genre. Sean Bean and Sophia Bush are an on-screen match made in heaven. They wade through harsh lighting, thick film grain, and buckets of blood to deliver a film that critics and audiences unfairly panned. While audiences may have moved along, I sure didn’t. I want to exist in a world of nothing but aughts genre films, but am forced to live in a world of elevated horror. Le sigh.
