Reviews
‘Orphan’ (2009) Review: The Not-So-Small Wonder
Jaume Collet-Serra’s directing doesn’t hold up much on a technical front, but it still produces a memorable and freaky watch.
I find myself asking why sequels are being made more and more these days. In most cases, they were already in production before becoming stuck in development hell, and in other cases they’re formed de novo without any real incentive or demand. 13 years later, we’re getting a prequel to Orphan, and this is the latter. Was anybody asking for this?
When I first watched Orphan back in middle school, I was thoroughly freaked out by it. But I never was one to fondly look back on it as an iconic horror film or even as a rewatchable popcorn flick. And now in the present day, I can firmly say this is a lot more enjoyable when you go in blind, but it still stands out as an interesting piece in the “evil child” subgenre of horror.
As a refresher, following a miscarriage, couple Kate and John adopt a Russian foster daughter named Esther. Esther’s precocious nature and odd mannerisms charm them at first, but soon her odd behavior and violent streak begin to show the cracks in her carefully constructed façade. Spoilers for an incredible twist from here on out, so if you haven’t seen it, stop here and come back.
If you’re looking for more depth out of the film knowing the twist upon rewatches, it may not come to you. While there are a few clever lines from Esther that were clearly intended to be seen differently on a second viewing, those hints toward Esther’s real identity of 33-year-old serial killer Leena are kind of sparse and fall off quickly until the reveal in the third act.
Isabelle Fuhrman’s Perfectly Evil Performance as Esther
Isabelle Fuhrman’s Esther is truly one of the evilest children put to film, and her performance carries the film on rewatches. Her creepy kid acting really lends to the movie’s best moments, even if there are times where her performance comes off as funny instead of demented. There is a genuinely hilarious jump scare that interrupts a kitchen sex scene between Kate and John, and some line deliveries with comedic timing feel unintentionally precise, but these are the exceptions to the rule.
Esther’s most frightening moments hinge on her cranking up the intensity of a situation to eleven very suddenly without giving much of a reaction as she does it, something Fuhrman excels in. There are plenty of moments where she unleashes all that psychotic energy and aggression, from strongarming her siblings at gunpoint to breaking her own arm with a vice grip to further a lie. Those moments are genuinely freaky and are where the film is at its best. Esther antagonizing Kate by reading her diary back at her just hits differently, so kudos to Fuhrman for being able to ramp up that quickly without chewing the scenery.
Vera Farmiga’s Emotional Depth in Orphan
Vera Farmiga’s performance likewise is stellar. Her interactions with John are filled with this soft sadness and anger you can tell is just under the surface of the dialogue, occasionally flaring out as she struggles to maintain control. It’s genuinely better than all her performances across the Conjuring movies since the role allows her a lot more range and authenticity than the very milquetoast writing she gets as Lorraine Warren.
On a technical level, the camerawork and editing have some serious issues. The DP on this film is all over the place with bad tracking shots for fake-out scares that never come and panning transitions to a new scene that lead nowhere. The most baffling shot of all is a close up on Esther’s face as she screeches and causes the entire screen to shake; instead of coming off as frightening, it just looks terrible and kind of annoying.
Scenes with otherwise good lighting occasionally have a muted coloring that is a lot more sepia-toned than necessary, a fault of trying to make a dreary film set in winter feel colder. Poor CGI blood muddles the violence in some scenes, while overblown music cues take a lot of the scariness out others. It isn’t that big of an offender in comparison to its contemporaries of the late 2000’s, but it’s just present enough to detract from the overall quality and vision of the film.
RATING: 6.5, maybe 7 (Attempted Playground Slide Murders)/10. Spectacular acting from both a young star and a veteran actress wrapped up in an enticing story. On top of it, you get some seriously jacked up moments you won’t be forgetting for a while, as well as some of the coolest art direction I’ve seen in a horror movie with Esther’s blacklight art. It’s just a shame it kind of trips directly into a punji pit of bad cinematography, and it stutters occasionally in attempting to scare.
Of all the horror movies to be described as a runaway train, Rob Savage’s Other Mommy is the first in recent memory to have that quality as a negative. A more focused piece of over-the-top supernatural horror would capitalize on starting at a high speed and just gunning it. It would get increasingly faster, more horrific with its effects and reveals, more stunning and spectacle-filled. But Other Mommy never utilizes the momentum it starts with. It stays at the same steady, uncomfortable pace. And it gets old, very fast.
Other Mommy Is Missing a First Act
The movie begins in what should have been the second act; it never does stop haunting the narrative that Other Mommy feels like it’s missing 30 minutes of setup and 10 minutes of breathing room that would actually get you to care about what’s happening. Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark) is a young girl already well acquainted with a creature known as Other Mommy. A supernatural being that can change shape and size to her liking, becoming anyone she wants and then some. The entity only desires one thing: for Bela to let it into her heart and give it a new body.
Bela’s parents, Ursula (played by Jessica Chastain, in a dual role as the Other Mommy) and Russell (Jay Duplass), become aware of the space-bending creature in the film’s very first scenes. Soon, they’re on the run from the creature that’s trying to tear the already strained family apart. But the overwrought family drama of an unfaithful mother and a scatterbrained father forced to hide their struggling marriage from their kid is smothered. Much like Chastain’s performance, it’s drowned out by a barrage of aggressive and unimpressive digital effects trying to milk every single moment for a fright, desperate to keep audiences’ attention.
A Clumsy Digital Effects Showcase That Smothers the Story to Death
Other Mommy is primarily concerned with showing off its titular monster and her reality-bending powers, jumping from one “scare filled”, dreamlike sequence to the next; heavy, heavy quotes on scare filled. You become inured to every trick the film has as it shows you all the most unimaginative uses of a shapeshifting, size changing monster possible. There is no clever framing or use of shadow to obscure it, no restraint at all really. The directing is frenetic and clumsy, but it makes sure to make the monster as clear as possible. It’s all out in the open, plain to see, and bizarrely mundane for a depiction of a demonic interloper.
Every jumpscare-a-minute scene moves too fast and is too overlit to ever scare. The bright and inappropriate atmosphere fails the already rough looking digital effects. What it amounts to is a choppily edited and disjointed assortment of scenes, with weak imitations of Trevor Henderson style abominations center stage. Tall and small and melty variations of a CGI Chastain, none of them work to evoke tension or fear or any emotion other than the occasional eyebrow raise for how goofy some of them look.
There are a few moments where Chastain teases at playing the monster effectively without face and body morphing effects, sporting a genuinely disturbing countenance and creepy voice. But as soon as these fragments of interest come, they’re washed away by warping her into a lanky, slinking monster of ridiculous proportions. What we get out of the dual role is a boring creature for the feature, and a dry, one-dimensional protagonist, both squandering the phenomenal actor Chastain is.
Other Mommy is Full of Dull Performances and Squandered Potential
Duplass offers little with his supporting role, providing flat dialogue and flatter comic relief as a middling SNL sketch’s idea of a clownish father. It’s worth noting Clark actually provides the most interesting performance among the entire cast, a feat impressive from such a young child actor. But even her endearing and heart-breaking time as Bela is too little and too shadowed by the faulty composition of the film it’s trapped in.
The trailer for Other Mommy may have caught audiences off guard at the cinema in the past few months. But ultimately, that trailer showed the movie’s entire hand. Other Mommy is a pasty, crooked collage of elements from the supernatural horror movies producer James Wan made the backbone of the genre a decade ago. That doesn’t make it a throwback; just a rehash of cliches, with no structure and no sense of cohesion. It never amounts to anything more interesting than what the marketing material showed, which is a tragic end for a film, if there ever was one.
Luz: The Flower of Evil is a movie simultaneously charged with and mired in ambition. It’s genuinely comical how overly ambitious of a first-time film it is for writer-director Juan Diego Escobar Alzate: a microbudget, shot on location in the mountains of Colombia, character driven psychological horror film meant to explore the very nature of good and evil while also tackling cults and misogyny.
So, it’s shocking how much of it works. Not all of it works, not at all, but it is cohesive enough to serve as a surprising experience with the colorful aesthetic it employs and incredibly dark places it goes to.
What Is Luz: Flower of Evil About?
After the death of their mother Luz, three sisters in a rural cult community find their faith waning. The three are the centerpiece of an elaborate theology crafted by their cult leader father, a man who is becoming more difficult to deal with by the day. So, when he brings a mute boy into town, chaining him up and claiming he’s the people’s messiah, an already tense situation devolves into outright madness. What ensues is the slow dissolution of the cult, and the torturous end of an already fractured family.
Let this usual synopsis section also serve as a content warning: the film does depict sexual violence very early on, about 25 minutes into the film. It’s not Irreversible levels of horrifically long, but it’s also not particularly brief and still graphic content by its nature. It can be difficult to stomach, so I’m mentioning it now for those who would rather avoid that sort of thing.
A Ponderous Arthouse Folk Horror About Good and Evil
The film has shocking moments, but it’s not very interested in shock value. This is first and foremost a slow burn, a piece of arthouse folk horror that is more about bleeding out than it is about a violent demise. The most obvious comparisons are to The VVitch and Midsommar, but even that feels like an inappropriate mix, even when it leans towards Aster’s commercial darling or Egger’s colonial nightmare.
Fundamentally, Luz is a study about people who mythologize suffering and cruelty and excuse it as being driven by outside spiritual forces rather than their own decisions. It’s about deconstructing harmful religious and cult mentalities, and it wears its philosophy on its sleeve (aggressively so). Alzate creates a visually and textually fascinating meltdown of his characters and the community they find themselves within.
I would say it’s a “descent into madness” if it didn’t feel clear that the characters were already in a tailspin right at the film’s outset. The script, especially through its second act, starts to feel repetitive and a little simplistic, with a somewhat anticlimactic ending and dialog that starts to feel less naturalistic and more tedious. But it’s an interesting dissection of a family, even if it’s rough around the edges.
Hyperreal Sense of Color, But Shaky Directing and Writing
The film’s most obvious and striking feature is its hyperrealist palette, bearing a rich Technicolor aspect that permeates throughout the entire runtime. Colorist Felipe Martinez U paints the mountainous countryside with such vibrancy, a simple but very effective contrast to the dying days of a cult the story centers on; bleak, muddy times, punctuated by vibrant nature all around. Aesthetically, it’s pretty clearly visually inspired by the early works of Pedro Almodóvar and the visual warmth of Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man.
Even the naturalistic tendencies of Terrence Malick make an appearance here, though how much of that is just in the gorgeous location scouting and how much is actually emulated by Alzate is up for debate. All around, the film lacks polish. The camerawork is amateurish in some ways, slightly cramped and occasionally uninspired in its framing. Sometimes the oversaturated look of the film can feel a little saccharine and heavy, but the pop of color here feels purposeful enough that I can forgive it as being highly stylized rather than trying to mask the weak points of a first-time director.
Is Luz: The Flower of Evil Worth the Watch?
In the search for great Latin American horror, Luz was an odd duck to stumble upon to be certain. But I’m a champion of strange birds with a lot of character, so you do the math.
Luz: The Flower of Evil is a struggle of a film, hard to watch at points despite how visually appealing it can be. It’s a brutal, bleak piece of psychological folk horror that certainly has a thin audience and will test the patience of even those the premise appeals to. But it does have as much substance as it does style, even when it treads into murky waters, and for that I think it’s worth the watch.
