Orphan

Combining psychological elements from The Bad Seed, The Omen, and The Good Son, director Jaume Collet-Serra's Orphan is the latest entry in the time-honored evil-child-thriller genre. After their third baby is stillborn, a troubled Connecticut couple—musician Kate (Vera Farmiga) and architect John (Peter Sarsgaard)—decide to adopt a child, even though they already have an adolescent son (Jimmy Bennett) and a hearing-impaired daughter (Aryana Engineer), whose deafness is attributed to an accident resulting from Kate's drinking. Visiting an orphanage run by Sister Abigail (CCH Pounder), the pair are drawn to a mysteriously prim-and-proper nine year-old Russian émigré named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), whose previous adoptive family perished in a house fire from which Esther narrowly escaped. Naturally, Esther turns out to be malevolent, and while Daniel immediately senses the child's wickedness, Kate is convinced that Esther just has serious (albeit unexplained) problems. Veterans Sarsgaard and Farmiga turn in solid performances, while young Fuhrman convincingly exudes evil in this schlocky and uneven but also scary film with a weird plot twist. Optional. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes with an alternate ending (4 min. total), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is a “Mama's Little Devils: Bad Seeds and Evil Children” featurette (15 min.) and the BD-Live function. Bottom line: a small extras package for an uneven chiller.] (S. Granger)