colore, USA 2009, di Jaume Collet-Serra
Durata: min. 123
Genere: thriller
Cast: Vera Farmiga (Kate Coleman), Peter Sarsgaard (John Coleman), Isabelle Fuhrman (Esther), Aryana Engineer (Max Coleman), Immy Bennett (Daniel Coleman) CCH Pounder (Sister Abigail)
Screenplay: David Johnson and Alex Mace
A young couple, after having two children and lost the third before he could come to light, they decide to adopt a child, inexplicably, thus accepting Esther in their home. A background of ill-concealed sin, renunciation and disappointments, hover around the figure of the two parents - a pair bound for the instability and seeks redemption in una nuova opportunità. Ma, tuttavia, “There’s something wrong with Esther”, come recita il motto da trailer, qualcosa di sbagliato sì, che non tarderà a venire a galla.
“The Orphan” si colloca direttamente all’interno della categoria dei thriller/horror con bambini diabolici, malefici in generale. Si tratta dell’ennesimo tentativo di dire la propria in un ormai inflazionato genere, di un inflazionato cinema, che ormai non riesce più nemmeno ad inflazionarsi più.
Fin dalle prime riprese, ci si rende conto di come il tentativo di costruire un quadretto familiare normale ma “spezzato” dalla tragedia, è debole, as the plot in general. Naively, the basic plot should be able to recreate a familiar but slips into a monotonous amalgamation to the mainstream. But it is dull and ordinary situations that arise the best thrillers, is the section with cruelty or maim with the daily violence that generates a great history of terror.
Unfortunately, this is not the case with "The Orphan".
I can not hear a lot of identification with the protagonist of the film, Kate Coleman, however, brilliantly played by Vera Farmiga a good . Can not you hear almost nothing about her husband, a character remarkably flat, only useful as Esther's shoulder. Only the acting of children in general, can not keep up everyone's attention: Max, Daniel and Esther il'intero film can stand on their shoulders and small but capable, perhaps, if he had taken a decision more interesting than to focus the story on them and not on the mother and chopped his sense of emptiness for the loss of the unborn child, to his former alcoholism, and his mother-in-law, history would surely have been the height of intentions.
The typical American family - typical, but perhaps not representative - Esther finds himself to choose between so many girls at the orphanage. Now Esther turns out to be more adult than normal, doing and saying things that you typically expect from a teenager. His passion for painting, his ability to play Tchaikovsky best of his adoptive mother, and how the child reacts to the world of elementary school, just put it into prominence. Here the script is in no way distorted: it fills the viewer through awareness discounted narrative clichés, such as forced scenes of tension - one of all, the classic evil bathroom cabinet showing Kate the face of her husband, terrifying, despite the 'married. In this manner, and follows the story knows what will happen and how. Esther will begin to make the poor even though less than might be expected from the premises, and is only a matter of understanding what you will be disappointed.
The first victim is the girl that makes fun of at school, which is precipitated in the snow, after a surreal scene of tension in the labyrinth of a wooden structure in the park, where the girl in question looks around terrified - not is unclear why, unfortunately - Esther reveals her true nature.
From here on is an escalation of wickedness and cruelty, crimes with unlikely the resolution - a turbine in which the two brothers acquired Esther sucks, Max and Daniel, accomplices and enemies of his foul misdeeds. Max, in particular, is under the thumb: the smaller her, has a deficiency hearing, and fails to perceive sounds without his equipment - and someone, of course, has already read a sad assist in this, to scenes in which she, unfortunately deaf, is the victim of the cunning of Esther.
Too easy? The whole structure on which rests the story is "too easy". The final revelation of the film, largely inconclusive because it does not add or detract from the character of Esther, slips away without a real sense, to the same ice that opens under the feet of the two wrestlers, the mother and daughter.
Not everything in this film is not very effective and an end in itself. The character of Esther, played by talented Isabelle Fuhrman, is a magnet towards which the whole attention of the film is focused, and closely, because it is really the only beacon in the night here. However, many are wrong to put this film tops the list of children with demonic thriller ... Wen, directly from the episode " Simpathy for the Devil" by Cowboy Bebop has a very similar nature, the soul an adult in pain, trapped forever in an unfortunate and seemingly innocent child's body. It is even more poignant as moral, the tale of Wen, compared with the raw epilogue "The Orphan", which does not teach anything that does not give anything. There is no reflection on human nature, about what we are and what we appear. But I realize that is far too much to expect in this case.
"The Orphan" fails to represent the dark side of childhood, the sense of alienation and the knowledge that something is deeply wrong in the nature of a child who acts as Esther. Its shares are too direct, and rarely effective in portraying the horror of his twisted mind - an example is the way in which the pigeon injured by Justice Daniel.
The film, therefore, failed in its primary purpose, whereas such masterpieces as " Children of the Damned "have marked the way, leaving deep scratches on the ground on which to continue the way others, like" The Omen .
addition to the main character, other rare touches of class emerge from history. One example is the final fight on the same thin ice that caused one of the many traumas of the Coleman family, the incident that saw Max fall into the icy water because of the distraction of the mother, arson, alcohol. It is a clear attempt to create a ring of redemption, especially for the mother, and a new starting point for his daughter Max
Also notable is the idea of \u200b\u200binvisible ink, true spirit of creative paintings of Esther, twisted and rotten as his heart, how beautiful and innocent outside, as it looks. Pleased to note style that affects all the credits, one of the few truly worthy of being seen today.
Unfortunately, these peaks, while significant, are not up to the rest, and you can not promote a work for only a few high moments that stand out on a consistent mediocrity and almost unchallenged.
can not be that close with a rebuke for the clichés in the film entered in force for the visual and narrative cliches, planted as nails on the whole story, and the unwillingness to deepen the characters, staining the past and not really easily and fleeting, and making them live. The story of Esther was discovered slowly, little by little, and his character was to grow in through its inability to grow outdoors: his soul was to expand and banging on the walls of his body, then to rebound ' internal force of circumstances, forced to sink into obscurity and madness, little by little, and the viewer had to be there to witness this slow and steady process, in a long and exhausting psychologically thrilling.
Another missed opportunity for a genre that is increasingly in crisis and that for once could draw to something more, renovating and restoring a classic theme lifeblood of a trend now almost extinct.
last bitter note to the director, Jaume Collet-Serra , which is the direct fault of its debut on the big screens Paris Hilton, with "House of Wax ," and other similar crimes. With "The Orphan" has certainly made a considerable leap in quality, which has almost redeemed by its uncomfortable past, but the road to Damascus, you know, is always long and fraught with pitfalls ...
