MOVIE REVIEW - Orphan

Where to begin? Orphan is new at the box office this week. It's another attempt at being scary this summer, that fails miserably.

Orphan is the story of a real screwed up young family, seemingly nice folks who turn out to be the dumbest people on earth. A young married couple with two young children. They decide to adopt another child, 9 year old Esther, who was an orphan from Russia. Of course, she has all kinds of problems and an agenda, and things go horribly wrong from the day the adoption becomes final.

That's as far as I'll go with the "plot." I can better spell it out this way. If you want to see a little girl terrorize and try to murder other little kids, even one that is deaf. If you want to see her try to seduce the father, try to kill the mother, she even beats a nun to death with a hammer. If all of that is good with you, then Orphan is your movie. If not, you can just move on to the shuffleboard court, or olf course, or clean the closet or something. Orphan is not scary, not suspenseful or anything redeeming at all.

Okay, I will give the movie its one due. They do promise a surprise ending that you don't see coming, and that's true. And that does take a bit of the sting out of the above, but it's way too late by that point. Orphan is just senseless, dumb and disturbing. It's predictable for the most part, and violent, jsut to be violent. Do we really like to see young kids doing really terrible things? Murder, manipulation, and just generally being ruthless and awful? I hope not.

Orphan is really not worth talking about at length, but it has drawn an audience this week, but to be honest, it's really not worth you time or your dime.