take me to snorphan (snow orphan)

take me to snorphan (snow orphan)

the other week, we decided it would be a good idea to show my friend's parents the movie orphan (2009), both because it is always a good idea to show people the movie orphan and because when we took my friend's father to see the movie m3gan (2022) at the cinema, he applauded at the end like someone had just landed a plane in a hurricane. we did not, as a point of fact, also choose to show my friend's parents the movie orphan: first kill (2022), because i have not yet seen it, and because life is disappointing enough without squandering all your joy at once. i do, of course, very much intend to watch orphan: first kill as soon as i can make my peace with the slightly uncanny decision to cast the same lead actress and physically de-age her without the use of CGI - though i guess anything is better than the more general modern vogue for resurrecting long-dead actors like peter cushing via the medium of creepy abba voyage-style holograms and also the girl who plays the titular orphan is excellent, so really what am i complaining about.

side note: it is extremely funny that the tagline for the movie orphan is "there's something wrong with esther" and the tagline for the movie orphan: first kill is "there's always been something wrong with esther", largely because it makes a strong case for a universe in which the movie prometheus was taglined "there's always been something wrong with that goop that you're sticking your hand in" or indeed, "there's always been something wrong with ridley scott".

but anyway.

i have a set of largely misspelled notes on my phone from our orphan viewing party, the most immediately arresting of which runs thus: "simply wouldn't adopt the weirdest child at the orphanage unless they were literally stuart little". this i think more or less summarises the key point of contention at the core of the movie orphan, which is that the titular orphan in orphan is just so obviously the most wretched orphan to ever sit upstairs at an orphanage open-house wearing a gilded age ballgown and painting to professional standard, and really anyone who chooses to adopt her is asking for whatever they get. 

in brief, then: beautiful scream queen vera farmiga and professional player of perverts peter sarsgaard are hoping to get over the traumatic loss of their youngest daughter by adopting an older child. they have two living children, one of whom is deaf and one of whom is an appalling bastard, and they appear to have done only minimal work in preparing these moppets for the impending arrival of another sibling (though i suppose as when bringing home a new baby, how much can anyone really do). they repair, for this reason, to a catholic orphanage, where peter sarsgaard sees a few kids playing around in the snow and says oh lol they're making a snorphan, and unfortunately i think that's very funny. at the orphanage, they meet esther, who is both russian and disturbingly insightful about parental grief, and the nun who runs the orphanage proceeds to give them the hard sell like a used car salesman who's turned the mileage back on a clapped out old banger with a two-directional drill. choice dialogue includes the moment when the nun is like the family esther came to us from died in a mysterious house fire and her prospective adopters are like ah sad. suffice it to say, they bring her home to their architecturally relevant house in connecticut, where she proceeds to charm everyone she meets apart from their bastard son, on account of he is a bastard.

all, however, does not remain rosy, as within approximately two days, vera farmiga is having doubts. i'm actually entirely serious on this front - it takes the woman two days to be like you know what, this child i have legally chosen to love and protect is actually a bit of a freakshow. regrets pile on regrets as esther proceeds to very obviously throw a school bully off a jungle gym, stone a pigeon to death and pretend to be less good at the piano than she actually is. at one point it is intimated that she understands the biblical meaning of the word "fuck", because she catches vera farmiga and peter sarsgaard getting it on in the kitchen and doesn't seem that bothered about it. the extent to which vera farmiga and peter sarsgaard are literally always trying to get it on in plain view of their entire household no matter the time of day is underexplored as a plot point, but in fairness there is already quite a lot going on.

cracks begin to emerge when it appears that esther is attempting to drive a wedge between her adoptive parents, given that vera farmiga now thinks she is an all-out psycho and peter sarsgaard is like wow wife behaving like pure shit lately. esther spends the majority of her time waging psychological warfare on her mother whilst pretending to be sweetness and light to her father - a fairly accurate representation of the way my cat behaves at home, but that's a side point - at one point breaking her own arm and blaming it on her mother in a pleasingly revolting sequence involving a vice. there are some excellent set pieces, not least esther's attempt to throw her adoptive sister into oncoming traffic followed by her distinctly more baroque attempt to lock her adoptive brother in his tree house before setting it on fire (and fair enough tbf), after which vera farmiga does some light googling and discovers that esther does not in fact come from russia at all but is instead from an ESTONIAN MENTAL INSTITUTION, suffers from HYPERPITUITARISM and is THIRTY THREE YEARS OLD. It cannot be overstated the extent to which the truth of her age is announced with the same high camp pipe organ gothic horror as the fact that she is criminally insane. and tbh as a person of thirty three years myself, this feels fair.

eventually, now revealed as the haggard crone she really is, esther attempts to seduce her adoptive father and, when that doesn't work on account of she is so old, stabs him to death with a hunting knife. everything comes to a head in a high octane electra complex scrap on ice, at the climax of which vera farmiga informs esther that she is not in fact her fucking mother, because she's thirty three and that's disgusting, and then kicks her head in, and it's great.

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unless i haven't already made it abundantly clear, i think this movie fucking rips.

in performance terms, everyone is at the absolute top of their game, particularly isabelle fuhrman, who as esther gives the kind of insanely committed starmaking performance that should have netted her a weird netflix teen drama had netflix meaningfully existed at that time. the movie's overall vibe is bewilderingly indie for something released by warner brothers, the weird camera angles and colour-grading strongly reminiscent of the previous year when twilight came out and it became apparent that everyone making it had been labouring under the delusion that it was art. however, where twilight doubled down on its perceived indie credentials by simultaneously ensuring that nothing happened and also that none of the dialogue could be heard throuhgout, orphan couples its shaky-cam realism with a non-stop array of madcap histrionics, lurching from one insane gothic set piece to the next like horace walpole let loose with a machete. the overall vibe and temperature of orphan climbs to fever pitch and then stays there for much of its two hour run time, crashing in all caps from vera farmiga's drinking problem to esther clawhammering a nun to death to someone playing guitar hero and yelling about it to peter sarsgaard hitting on a woman at a playground to vera farmiga googling "children who kill" to esther doing some pornographic dayglo portraiture to peter sarsgaard crying to esther suffocating the bastard son with a pillow to vera farmiga punching esther in the face at a hospital to esther taking her FAKE CHILD TEETH out because she is THIRTY THREE. the overall tone and momentum of this movie reminds me of nothing so much as that bit in young frankenstein (1974) where they teach the monster to sing putting on the ritz, except all he actually does is yell UHH-UH-UHHH-UH-UHHHHH, tap dance and then go berserk and try to kill everyone - and when i tell you that's a good thing, i hope you know you well enough to understand that i mean it.

it's also worth pointing out that this movie for some reason features character actress margo martindale, who turns up as vera farmiga's therapist who appears not to like her and keeps making her pay for sessions when she effectively tells her to fuck off, and i think that's fantastic.

anyway, what a great movie, i'm glad i showed it to my friend's parents. if you need me to come round and show it to your parents, i'm sure that can be arranged.

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semi-relatedly, you should watch the movie the novice (2021), also starring isabelle fuhrman, which is one of my favourite films of the last 10 years, but that’s not really for here.