Orphan Film

Orphan is a 2009 American horror film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard and Isabelle Fuhrman. The film centers...
Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard) are experiencing strains in their marriage after Kate's third child was stillborn. The loss is particularly hard on Kate, who is still recovering from a drinking habit that cost her her job. While visiting the local orphanage, they decide to adopt Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), a 9-year-old Russian girl. While Kate and John's daughter Maxine (Aryana Engineer), who is deaf and communicates with sign language, embraces Esther almost immediately, their son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is somewhat less welcoming.

Kate grows suspicious when Esther, who watched Kate and John have sex, expresses far more knowledge of sex and its slang than would be expected for a child her age. Not long after Esther arrives, she pushes a schoolmate, who had picked on her, off a playground slide, breaking her ankle. Max saw Esther shove the girl, but covers for Esther by saying that the girl "slipped." At dinner Daniel is mad and annoyed at Esther, and lets it be known he doesn't consider her to be his sister.

Kate is further alarmed when Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder), the head of the orphanage, warns her and John about Esther's tendency to be around when things go wrong. Esther overhears this and later kills Sister Abigail by bludgeoning her with a hammer. She forces Max to help her hide the body and the hammer. Daniel sees Esther and Max descending from his treehouse from behind a rock, not knowing they hid the hammer there. Later that night, Esther threatens to kill Daniel, or at the very least subject him to genital mutilation, if he tells anyone what he saw.

Kate is told that the Russian orphanage Esther came from has no record of her ever being there. However, John does not believe her, despite continued ominous behavior by Esther. At one point, Esther breaks her own arm in John's vise and convinces John that Kate broke it after Esther desecrated the garden grave site of her stillborn child's ashes. When John suggests that Kate spend the night downstairs while Esther stays in the master bedroom, Kate drives out and purchases two bottles of wine. After a struggle, she pours the opened bottle of wine down the drain. On Esther's first day back at school, she slips Kate's SUV into neutral, nearly killing Max. Afterward, John and Kate's psychiatrist confront her with the unopened bottle which Esther had found. They blame the accident on her carelessness because of her hangover.

Kate learns that Esther was housed at a mental institution in Estonia called the Saarne Institute, but when she expresses misgivings to John, he and her counselor thinks that Kate is relapsing into her drinking habit. After John produces the other bottle Kate bought the night before, he threatens to leave her unless she gets help.

Daniel learns of the hammer from Max and decides to get it and go to the police. However, Esther sets the treehouse on fire, intending to get rid of the evidence and kill Daniel. Daniel escapes by falling out of the tree, severely injuring his neck and knocking him unconscious. Esther tries to finish him off by smashing a brick over his head, but Max shoves her out of the way just in time. Esther again tries to kill him at the hospital by unhooking his respirator and attempting to smother him with a pillow, placing him in a near-fatal coma. Doctors rush into the room and manage to save Daniel. Outside, Kate angrily knocks Esther down, and is subdued and sedated by doctors.

That night, Esther tries to seduce a drunk and dazed John, who had drunk Kate's last bottle. John realizes Kate was telling the truth all along and threatens to call the orphanage about her, telling her to stop her behavior and go to her room. Esther goes upstairs, holding back tears until she reaches her room, then submits to a deep heartbroken crying spell before losing her temper and tearing up her room in a rage. John goes up later to comfort her and discovers her disturbing artwork in her dark, now-ransacked and empty room; shortly thereafter the electricity is shut off. When he goes downstairs to investigate, Esther (who switched off the electricity) catches him from behind and stabs him several times, leaving him for dead when she spots Max watching at the top of the stairs.

As Kate is coming out of sedation, she gets a call from the Saarne Institute's director, Dr. Värava (Karel Roden), who reveals a terrifying secret. It turns out that Esther isn't a 9-year-old girl at all, but a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer. She has hypopituitarism, a disorder that stunted her physical growth and has spent most of her life as a serial killer posing as a little girl (in the original script, she was the victim of terrible rape and abuse by her father who later abandoned her on the claim she could never be a real woman and, ultimately became the first person she killed. This however, was left out of the movie). Leena has made a habit of moving into families as an adopted "child" and ultimately attempting to seduce the father, whom she kills (along with the rest of the family) after his inevitable rejection. While the audio of Värava and Kate's call is still playing, Esther/Leena sheds her child's clothes to reveal scars on her neck and wrists. They are covered with injuries caused by a straitjacket, which the doctors at a mental home kept her in to keep her from harming them. She also has mostly developed breasts, an adult figure, and dentures to cover her hideous adult teeth.

When Kate gets home, she is finally pushed over the edge after discovering her husband. Kate goes looking for Max and in the process gets shot by Esther/Leena with the revolver she found in the house. Kate finally finds Max while she on top of the roof of their garden, which is a glass. She breaks the glass and falls on top of Esther who was trying to shoot Max. When Esther seemed unconscious Kate takes Max and runs away from the house. When the police arrive, Leena disappears. Leena runs after Kate, trying to kill her and Max with a knife. Their chase takes them to a frozen pond, where Kate and Leena struggle. Max grabs Leena's snubnosed revolver trying to shoot her, but misses, causing the ice to shatter. Leena and Kate fall into the freezing water. Kate crawls out of the hole, followed by Leena. Leena seemingly reverts to her little-girl persona, begging for her life and addressing Kate as her mother--while hiding a knife behind her back. Kate angrily responds that she isn't Leena's mother and violently kicks her in the face. The blow breaks Leena's neck and sends her flying back into the pond. The film ends with Kate, now a widow, and Max leaving the pond.
Cast

* Vera Farmiga as Katherine "Kate" Coleman
* Peter Sarsgaard as John Coleman
* Isabelle Fuhrman as Esther/Leena Klammer
* CCH Pounder as Sister Abigail
* Jimmy Bennett as Daniel Coleman
* Aryana Engineer as Maxine "Max" Coleman
* Margo Martindale as Dr. Browning
* Karel Roden as Dr. Värava
* Rosemary Dunsmore as Grandma Barbara
* Genelle Williams as Sister Judith