Orphan: Film Review

For my second film analysis, I will be depicting the film “Orphan” to find which narrative structures are supported and discover those that are challenged.

Orphan, 2009, is an American mystery, thriller directed by "Jaume Collet-Serra". Targeted towards individuals who prefer the more psychological thrill rather than “blood and guts”, it is likely that predominantly, females at the age of 18-30 will be the spectators scaring themselves silly with this “evil child” movie.

Based around the story of a young couple adopting a 9 year old girl, Esther, after losing their fourth baby through a miscarriage, the plot soon changes after discovering that she isn’t the innocent, calm and collected 9 year old she presented herself as when they went to visit her in her care home. Portraying herself as nothing but versatile, Esther turns into the once ordinary family of five’s worst nightmare.

The first narrative structure I will be writing about is one discovered by the Bulgarian philosopher, “Tzvetan Todorov”. Todorov stated that in a film, there was a beginning, middle and an end. Within these sections, the action followed the lines of; beginning with equilibrium, having a disruption to the equilibrium, recognising the disruption, attempting to repair the disruption, and then the end of the film discovering the equilibrium once again. When focusing on the film, Orphan, I feel the structure is used throughout the scenes to present the audience with this “mainstream” narrative and is definitely followed, however, at the beginning of the film, an activity that leads me to believe that there was never equilibrium occurs and then later on, the narrative structure begins with the equilibrium. At the beginning of the film, the flashback of the mother’s trauma is shown through the explicit scene of the mother having a nightmare about giving birth to her already dead baby girl. The fast paced, shocking scene soon ends and begins with the next, calm scene that begins the narrative structure that Todorov stated as the family of five are playing in their large, beautiful house, as normal families would. When Kate, (Vera Farminga), and John, (Peter Sarasgaard) visit the children’s home, in hope to find their dream child, Esther is the one who soon catches their attention when seen sitting on her own, painting. 

Her persona comes across as mature and interesting for a 9 year old girl as she begins talking to the couple and slowly persuading them to choose her as their new edition to the family. When brought home three weeks later, Esther carries on to be her usual, well-mannered self when she learns sign language for her newly sister, Max, (Aryana Engineer). As both of her newly brothers soon become aware, Esther is the child who causes all of the damage within the family home and accidents begin to happen. As we as spectators are aware of the incidents and who causes them, the equilibrium is disrupted. Esther begins to plot murderous plans on the family and out of the blue, attempts to seduce the father. The mother, Kate, is aware of the strange behaviour in Esther but the father, John, isn’t willing to believe it. Having acknowledged Esther’s behaviour, Kate recognises the disruption and then attempts to repair it through speaking to Esther’s previous carers and finding records on her. To her astonishment and soon the spectators, we find that Esther is actually an elder woman in a younger body. As Esther’s carers and previous carers begin to mysteriously die, the family decide to investigate further until Esther attempts to kill the mother and sister by chasing them with a gun. The equilibrium is once again found after the faced paced scene ends when the mother kicks Esther’s head and she falls into a frozen lake. Despite the vicious, horrible death, the equilibrium is found through the relaxation the spectators find, knowing that she can’t harm the family again and all of the chaos is gone. 

When focusing on binary opposition, it is clear that Orphan has involved this narrative structure through good vs. evil. Esther is presented as a calm and collected child at the beginning and as the truth is unwound, we get to see the complete opposite in the same character when she plays a disturbed elder woman, psychopathically killing her nearest. At the same time, we are also influenced to believe that the plot follows “good vs. evil” by us being led to believe that Esther’s family are the good characters, having brought Esther into their family and attempted to make her one of their own, whereas Esther is the evil character who quite clearly is there to disappoint.

For my third and last narrative structure, I will be focusing on Vladimir Propp’s theory of character types.  Believing that all stories involve characters who can be organised into different character types including, “The villain”, “The helper”, “The donor” and “The hero”, to name but a few, I have investigated into whether this particular film follows this structure and found that it more so does than doesn't.

As a conclusion to this analysis, I have found that all of the three narrative structures are followed throughout the film Orphan; however specific parts such as all of the character types being involved are not. As an addition to these specific narrative structures, I would also suggest that genre structures are included within this film by the specific horror conventions that are shown, including evil children which was a popular convention in the 1970’s. 

As seen in the table I have produced, Esther is both the villain and the false hero. As stated, Esther presents herself as the “families missing piece”, filling in the gap of their family and proving to be every parents dream through her actions. Quite obviously, this was all an act and Esther presents her real self as the Villain when she begins to murder and tear the family apart through her wicked ways. Having noticed quite early on that Esther was not a normal child, Daniel helps the family to recognise her bad intentions and gives Laura something to worry about. Laura begins to investigate through Esther’s past and is given information by Sister Abigail, who would be classed as the donor. At the end of the film, Kate fulfills the family’s needs by getting rid of Esther and killing her. For this reason, I feel as if Kate has become the hero in the other characters eyes as the equilibrium is found again. Other character types such as the dispatcher and the princess are not included.