Orphan: First Kill

When 2009 cuckoo's nest horror Orphan revealed its brain-bending twist, audiences were left genuinely gobsmacked. Director Jaume Collet-Serra had constructed a deeply disturbing depiction of a 9-year-old Russian girl adopted by American parents, only for it to be revealed that she's not a creative prodigy engaging in disturbingly sexualized actions: Esther, played by then-12-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman, was actually Leena, a 33-year-old woman afflicted by a developmental condition that left her looking exactly like a 9-year-old. Jaws hit floors, and the conclusion ruled out any kind of sequel. Plus, and here was the bigger problem, what's left to say once you take out the big reveal?

Maybe that challenge was why it took 13 years to finally come up with a filmable idea, but scriptwriter David Coggeshall (with a story from original Orphan writers David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Alex Mace) has finally cracked the conundrum for Orphan: First Kill. As the title implies, this is a prequel and heads straight to the Saarne Institute in Estonia. That's where Leena (Fuhrman returning, with some bursts of digital trickery and body doubles to get past the fact she's now closer in age to Leena than Esther) is currently incarcerated. After an impressive escape that stresses her physical aggressiveness, deceptive strength, and genius as a manipulator, she manages to con her way to the U.S. The marks this time are the affluent Albrights – wealthy socialite Tricia (Stiles), artist Allen (Sutherland), and their snobbish partying son, Gunnar (Finlan). Their family has been in tatters ever since their daughter, Esther, disappeared, and the girl's astonishing reappearance only seems to cause concern with her therapist (Walkes) and the detective (Kanagawa) who has spent the last couple of years hunting down dead ends.

If Orphan's great trick was in its reveal, Orphan: First Kill is all about tracking Leena's deceit. Where most slasher sequels and prequels concentrate on the next victim, this is basically a con flick from the con artist's POV. Leena is a grifter, and the casting of Fuhrman over a decade ago proves that agents are an underrated and essential component of putting a film together. In Orphan she played near her own age, and then switched for the resolution into an older woman. This time, it's all about the effort she has to put on to pretend to be a 9-year-old girl. As in the first film, Leena's downfall springs from her maturity, and it's kind of refreshing that Leena's weak spot, yet again, is that she gets horny for her surrogate father – who, to her, is just some guy. As Esther, the way she touches Allen is creepy; but this is Leena, so there's an element of classic Reagan-era feminine rivalry flicks like Black Widow and Single White Female when her "mother" starts to realize something is awry.

Would that be enough to justify a whole sequel, even with another excellent performance from Fuhrman? Following on from her jaw-clenchingly tense portrayal of obsessive competitiveness in Novice, she brings a darker, more mature twisted genius to Leena/Esther. Director William Brent Bell more clearly establishes the physical difference between Esther and Leena, making Fuhrman's transition between the two even more unsettling. Moreover, it's a chance for her to take the gimmick of the original and turn it into character, much as Anthony Hopkins did with Psycho II – a sequel that was also deemed inessential at the time, but that has been reappraised for its playful nastiness.

But really, what makes Orphan: First Kill worthwhile is that it acknowledges the original before taking a hard left turn into overblown soapy madness. The modern gothic of the first film transforms here into a perfectly fitting explosion of operatic schlock.