BOTTOM LINE: Isabelle Fuhrman puts in an excellent performance as the psychotic Esther, but the rest of the film is so perfunctory and lamely directed that there is nothing to really recommend it.

THE GOOD: Watching a great performance from a child is something to behold and 12-year old Isabelle Fuhrman does an incredible job portraying the disturbed Russian child Esther who is adopted by the somewhat dysfunctional family of Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard). Morning the loss of her still-born daughter, Kate and John decide to adopt Esther after making a warm connection on their first meeting. Everything seems to be going well until strange and bizarre accidents begin to occur. Before long, Kate suspects that Esther is up to no good, but her own issues do not allow John to believe her, leading to a tragic climax where Esther is revealed to be something much more sinister and hideous than any of them could have imagined. Scenes involving Esther manipulating each of the family members, particularly the two children, are involving thanks to Fuhrman’s performance, and she somehow manages to convey a deeply cold malevolence that is quite watchable. The ending where the truth about Esther is revealed is a welcome surprise. “Orphan” relies on its intriguing premise and Fuhrman’s performance to create scenes of tension and character suspense, and in this respect, the film works on some levels.

THE BAD: Despite Fuhrman’s best efforts in the role of Esther, the film’s direction is very lame and pedestrian, and contradicts all the tension and suspense that is otherwise being created by the actors. There are numerous false scares (ie scares that lead to nothing) that are absolutely unnecessary and become quite ridiculous, and they denigrate the intensity of the actual scares when they do come. Subtlety is not a strong suit of this film either, with a number of sequences of Esther’s violent behaviour taken way over the top, with one stand out example being when Esther brutally murders a nun from the orphanage with a hammer. Seeing the nun’s head bashed with the hammer several times was not needed to get the point across. The John Coleman character is also badly written; he’s either completely stupid or not that thoughtful considering he takes Esther’s side most of the time, and he cannot seem to work out that everything bad in their family started when Esther entered their lives. All of these factors make for a film that could have been ten times more terrifying if the filmmakers had not relied on cheap tricks or having too much over the top violence.