Review in a Hurry: Meet John and Kate—plus hate! As if they didn't have enough problems, the parents of this film brood really do share names with the Gosselins, but here it's their foster kid who's truly screwed-up. Overlong and muddled, Orphan is excessively sadistic and exceedingly stupid.
The Bigger Picture: Scary-kid movies just aren't what they used to be. In a world where some children get their hands on firearms, who's really afraid of a scowling moppet with a hammer?
But the better question is: Who adopts a creepy kid with a Russian accent immediately after learning her previous home was torched mysteriously? An alcoholic (Vera Farmiga) with miscarriage trauma and an adulterer (Peter Sarsgaard) who's chronically unable to see the obvious, it seems. Hard to blame them, though: They spend so much time trying to have sex in unusual positions and places that there isn't much time left to worry about what their three children—a deaf little girl, a sullen preadolescent boy and the terrifying, freakazoid nut-job adoptee—are up to all the time.
It's a bad sign when a director's latest film makes you long for the coherence and creativity of his feature debut—and that was House of Wax with Paris Hilton. At an overlong two hours, Orphan starts strong, then spins its wheels endlessly before getting to the point.
Though nothing here can accurately be called "good," the story's leap into ludicrousness during the final 40 minutes does provide a kind of entertainment. It's easy to imagine a cult of mockery building around this flick in the coming years, but right now, you really shouldn't pay to see it.
The 180—a Second Opinion: You do have to give props to the commitment displayed by 11-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman as evil Esther. She really goes for it, combining the innocent look of a young Lindsay Lohan with the craziness of the more recent model.