From Orphan to Icon

Released in 2009, Jaume Collet-Serra's Orphan was a breath of fresh air in big screen horror. Torture porn's hold on the genre was slowly being replaced by mixed quality remakes and found footage, making this oddball high concept twisty thriller with A-list actors all the more strange for a theatrical hit. Best of all, it was GOOD. We mostly remember it for having one of the wackiest, most rewarding (and fine: maybe a little insensitive) twists, but even before we discover Esther's secret, Orphan is on fire.

When news rolled out that there would be a prequel with Fuhrman reprising her lead role, I was thrilled. On both a visual and storytelling level, how do you revisit this character thirteen years later (in the real world) when the point of the first film was a) she looked like a child b) she wasn't a child and c) we know where she ends up. It's a lot to juggle for an audience who knows the material, but small tidbits of behind-the-scenes intel (the heavy use of forced perspective, the casting of Julia Stiles, Fuhrman's clear glee with the character) left me with very little doubt that Orphan: First Kill would make my day.

Spoiler alert: it did. 

Quick Plot: You remember Esther, but before she made her way to the snowy suburbs of Connecticut by way of Toronto, our Estonian shortie was better known as violent mental patient Leena. All it takes is a new and naive art therapist to help Leena find her path to western freedom.

The next step is to target the right family, preferably one with a missing child, comfortable bank account, and hot patriarch. Enter the Albrights, proud descendents of Mayflower passengers with a sprawling estate and simmering WASPy tension. Dad Allen is a painter who was deeply fractured by the disappearance of Esther, while mom Tricia continued her fancy charity work and organic smoothie lifestyle while also encouraging older son Gunnar through his passionate fencing training.

Rich people, man. They're something.

Leena slips into Esther's lifestyle easily enough, quickly bonding with Allen over their shared artistic ability. But Leena (who we'll now call Esther because an icon deserves nothing less) senses something isn't quite right, especially when she clocks a private investigator grabbing some of her well-experienced fingerprints.

To say any more about Orphan: First Kill would be cruel, especially since, in an act of shockingly refreshing restraint, the marketing avoided spoiling any twists. Go into it fresh and open knowing you'll be rewarded by the best Lifetime thriller not made by Lifetime.

I mean that as the biggest compliment I have in my arsenal: Orphan: First Kill is a trashy joy (complete with a drool-worthy kitchen). It's slightly less bonkers in some aspects than its predecessor, which had my jaw dropping in the best of ways, but still manages to throw us plenty of juicy curves. Director William Brent Bell (of the underrated The Boy) has a refreshing approach to his style. So much of current horror seems to have learned the wrong lessons from Final Destination, forcing every scene of violence to unfurl slowly as if trying to land on some "Scariest Moments In Horror" listicle. Sometimes, you can just walk into a man's house and kill him as soon as his back is turned. 

If there's a flaw to First Kill (aside from its title, which we'll get back to) it's that the finale seems to be a little TOO close to its Lifetime style, cramming almost too much action into such a short amount of time without room for a proper denouement. Still, considering it honors the original's callbacks to The Good Son, my complaints are minimal.  

Everything here is working as it should. Brett Detar's score is plucky strings with a wicket attitude. Kim H. Ngo's costumes are chic when they need to be and "this girl thinks she's Shirley Temple but is actually Baby Jane" elsewhere. The makeup department and camerawork do wonders at turning 25-year-old Fuhrman into a 31-year-old-channeling-a-10-year-old. THERE'S A LOT HAPPENING FOLKS.

And all of it...well, all of it is pretty darn fun.

High Points

There's something truly wonderful about a film franchise (in the making) that embraces and celebrates women. Vera Farmiga is no easy act to follow, but Julia Stiles is perfectly cast and plays her WASPy foil grandly. And to no one's surprise, Isabelle Fuhrman crawls back into Esther's frills and ribbons with a shockingly robust performance that rightfully gives us a villain, victim, and camp queen

Low Points

When we first meet Leena, we're told she JUST RECENTLY murdered someone, and there's little doubt that it wasn't her debut. So why, goodness gracious WHY is this film subtitled First Kill? Had it been Esther's First Kill, I'd be all for it (since technically, this is Leena's rebirth as Esther) but nope. I doubt it's the fault of the (very good) screenplay, but considering writer David Coggeshall's name is on another one of the worst titled horror sequels of this century, he's an easy scapegoat. That movie? The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia

Lessons Learned

Marriage means occasionally dealing with rich pricks to show your love for your wife

If you want to stay on Julia Stiles' good side, remember this: all macaws are parrots, but not all f*cking parrots are macaws

Kale smoothies are gross, but dead mouse kale smoothies are even worse

Rent/Bury/Buy

I can't imagine that by the time this post goes live, you haven't already heard enough glowing things about Orphan: First Kill to have made you watch it, but seriously: watch it. Streaming on Paramount Plus, it's the rare horror sequel/prequel that fully understands the possibilities of the genre's camp nature and balances that with layered characters who have plenty of places to go. It's a joy. 

The Curse of the Shortening

Thwarted, once again. 

Let me tell you folks, I had some grand big but-not-in-a-vertical-way plans for this month, yet once again, the hustle and bustle of the real world (minus Puck) reared its head to complicate my February coverage.

Also, there was a kitten.

No, concerned Animal Hoarders viewers with the call-in number on speed dial, I did not bring this adorable little feline into the already crowded 4-cats, 2-people apartment I call home. But I did find this little fella squatting in my apartment building hallway on a cold winter's night, which led to a few days of converting my bathroom into a highly secure foster home undetectable to the rest of the brood. Perhaps it was fitting that my real-life February would be crashed by a tiny yet mighty creature. But it was still a tad inconvenient.

Also, I won't lie (mostly for fear of being karmically repaid/punished in the style of last year's most terrifying February entry, Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio): I like the Olympics. A. Lot.

Sochi strays, opening pomp, Bob Costas' eyeballs bravely fighting a losing battle to that smarmy and sneaky Matt Lauer and his presumed conjunctivitis planting, and most of all, A TERRIFYINGLY ICY RUSSIAN PRODIGY DOUBLE AXELING WITHOUT IRONY TO THE THEME FROM SCHINDLER'S LIST.

Not to mention the glory of Pairs fashion, shockingly outdoing the typically Vogue: Slovakia caliber of Ice Dancing dresses.

Anyway, my point is that I just didn't get to go the distance I was hoping for this month, but that's what fellow bloggers are for!  Thankfully, good pal Elwood Jones of From the Depths of DVD Hell picked up some slack with a few Shortening-minded reviews. Check 'em out!

Orphan
Curse of Chucky
Piranha 3DD
The Brood

Want more? Head on yonder to Pearce's Horror Movie Reviews for his thoughts on one of the hallmarks of '80s Shortenings, Ghoulies. Because you can never have too much of a little thing!

As always, we'll be back shortly with some less specially small tales of horror. Until then, stand tall!

Drop Dead Stevie!

Come The Shortening, we like to take chances here at the Doll's House. Note that 'taking chances' really just means 'watching something that might possibly have a vertically challenged villain streaming on Netflix Instant.'

I'm a wild one.

Quick Plot: Claire and Adrian are a well-to-do couple with some secret heartbreak residing in an impossibly awesome three-story home. They're thrilled to adopt Isabel, a pleasant little girl with some darkness in her own past. Before you can say Is This An Orphan Sequel?, Claire discovers her own Isabel may have brought a menacing imaginary friend into their lives.

It's fairly simple to guess where things go from here. Well-intentioned but too logical husband thinks Claire is going crazy? Check. Social worker checks in with terrible backstory on seemingly angelic daughter? Check. Distrusting grandma? Check. Careers being damaged? You betcha!

A lot of the turns are spelled out like an alphabetical magnet set on a refrigerator (literally, in some junctures) but that doesn't necessarily take anything away from this surprisingly taut little thriller. As Claire, Catherine McCormack is somewhat stuck with the same role shaken through by Mia Farrow, Ellen Burstyn, and even Vera Farmiga, but like those actresses, she has a wonderfully strong presence that easily sells her stakes. 

Stevie is directed by Bryan Goeres, who has mostly worked in television save for a rather glaring second unit credit for Anna Nicole Smith's infamous Skyscraper (to quote Lifetime's biopic, "the movie is called Skyscraper. It takes place in a skyscraper"). Despite the somewhat confusing, sort of addressed oddness of every character speaking with a different accent, Goeres does some very sleek work in building tension around what evil force is after Isabel and Claire. Writer David Markus (whose even MORE exciting IMDB resume includes credits for the Sweet Valley High TV series, of whose theme song I sing every other day or so) gets stuck with a few of the same old patterns (particularly with the husband character) but a few third act mysteries involving the possible source of Isabel's unwanted pal take the film on an interesting path.

What's most successful about Stevie is that it's ultimately a very earnest film. Claire and Adrian are good people who really want to give the charming Isabel a loving home. Even secondary characters like Adrian's stuffy mother prove to be much, well, NICER than a lazier film may have made them. We like these people, and therefore, want the titular imaginary friend/ghost/invisible demon to simply leave them alone. That he doesn't makes us as tense as we should be.

High Points

Creepy crayon drawings man. They always get me

Low Points

I'm not sure if this is a spoiler, because I was never quite sure how much of it I was supposed to know: see, Stevie plays a little with its timeline, something that isn't explicitly said, but seems clear enough. But maybe it's not supposed to be? We eventually get a rather important, long-teased out reveal, but I can't quite decide if the occasionally confusing time jumps is supposed to serve that

Lessons Learned

Garbage disposals are awesome, unless you happen to be residing in a horror film where they will inevitably cause doom

In mystery European land where everyone has their own accent, barbecues are generally held in chilly weather that requires autumn jackets

Even the most loving German Shepard will scoff at an unwanted imaginary friend

Rent/Bury/Buy

Stevie isn't necessarily that special a film, but it's executed well enough to make its 90 minute running time worth a dive. The film packs a few genuinely effective scares and is served by a strong cast that overcomes some of the more predictable plot points. If you're in the mood for something solid, if not shockingly game changing, here you go.

Shortening Cred: Any specifics could be spoilery, so we'll just add up what you already know from the Netflix description--creepy little girl, imaginary friend, letter magnets--to say yes, this qualifies. 

Sour Lemons Have Sour Kids

Remember how I justified my recommending The Crush for its one scene featuring Cary Elwes punching a 14-year-old Alicia Silverstone with all the might of Thor? I'm giong to spoil my review of the very mediocre Case 39 with the one reason worth watching it:

The little girl calls Renee Zellwegger Pumpkinhead.

True, it would have been more appropriate if sour lemons were also involved, but it was still enough to make me spit out my pumpkinhead latte.

Quick Plot: Emily (not me) is a dedicated social worker who becomes especially obsessed with her latest case, a 10 year old girl named Lily whose family seems...off. Not sexually abusive or alcoholic, just creepy and foreboding and oh yeah, the kind of people who decide to end parenting woes by stuffing their weird kid inside a lit oven.

CPS doesn’t generally let that one slip through the cracks.

As Lily’s folks head to the nuthouse, Emily decides to do what any responsible social worker would do and foster the little burn victim herself. All is peachy until another one of Emily’s cases--and a fellow member of Lily’s group therapy sessions--commits a horrendous crime after receiving a phone call...from Emily’s landline!

Case 39 was filmed way back in 2006. For the young ones in the audience, 2006 was apparently a time when every working professional relied on a home phone and answering machine, the latter of which is super useful for establishing character and plot exposition. 

Sort of like how having your lead pick up an alarm clock is really useful for the director to then throw in the jump scare of having the alarm clock RING!

Or having Ian McShane (playing Emily’s detective pal) lean against a window at a crime scene while describing the grisly deed, only for a vicious doberman to leap at said window and snarl, just because...um...he heard Ian McShane tell a grisly tale and wanted to add an effective punch?

See, Case 39 is THAT kind of film, one where a slipping A-list actress is charged with looking worried while computer generated effects pixelate around her. Despite what many a horror fan may have said, it’s not really awful...just kind of dull. Zellwegger commits to looking confused and helpless with decent skill, while Bradley Cooper and the infinitely more interesting Ian McShane are good enough in supporting roles with (SPOILER ALERT) hilarious death scenes. But the film on a whole iszzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Underwhelming. Not bad enough to sit on a shelf for three years, but ultimately the kind of forgettable material that might better suit late night cable surfing. 

High Points

For the first half hour or so, Case 39 is fairly promising as Lily’s creepy homelife and its effects unravel in front of us. Had the film sustained that strangeness, it may have actually been decent rather than relying on deep-voiced demon talk from a child actor with none of the grand intensity as Orphan’s Isabelle Furhman

Low Points

Let’s face it: Case 39 doesn’t really care about the actual mythology located within itself. We have no real idea why Lily is what she is, how she came to exist in this particular time or place, why she targets who she does, or you know, anything. I don’t need an overly complicated backstory or flashback or extraneous character narrating the tale, but you know, give your own villain something of worth

Lessons Learned

Best way to know that your child is evil? She cuts peas in half with a knife. Even Jerry Seinfeld would find that offensive

In case countless genre films haven’t taught you well enough, let me remind you that when a suspicious character asks you what your biggest fear is, answering truthfully will most likely lead to hornets buzzing out of your orifices

Deep demon voice: Does. Not. Work. Ever.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh, Case 39 isn’t the worst thing to come out of a movie theater but there’s little reason to tell you to watch it. As an instant watch, it’s an okay enough time killer that you’ll probably forget ever happened soon after viewing. In terms of its vertically challenged caliber, you’re far better off checking out that OTHER adoption-gone-wrong mainstream hit Orphan, which has far more zest than the tepid and timid Case 39. But hey, somewhere out there, I’m sure there’s someone with a thing for sour-faced blondes, contrived jump scares, and synthesized demon voices just waiting to love this movie. I am no one to judge.

Call Me

Having lived a year in the land of the morning calm, I can confidently say that the only people I trust to make a film about a killer phone are Koreans. When I was there in 2005--back when the iPhone was a mere fantasy of dystopian literature--phones were STILL equipped with what can only be described as magic (or aps before they were aps). All mine had was a spectacular ringtone, but friends’ LGs included horoscope updates and breathalyzers.

Naturally, I’d go east for a serial killing cell movie.

Quick Plot: Sassy reporter Ji-won starts receiving mysteriously menacing messages on her second-hand cell phone, perhaps as a result of her recently published controversial story on sex offenders. Her sister and brother-in-law invite Ji-won to stay at their isolated country home but once there, the calls continue while the couple’s perfectly adorable daughter, Yeong-ju, becomes a bad seed fueled by a sudden lust for daddy.

Also, there’s lots of sudden shots of long-haired Asian females staring maniacally. 

Like many a Korean horror film made in the 21st century, Phone is a) a tad derivative b) occasionally creepy c) well-acted d) hard to see and e) too long. That being said, it does have a few tricks that make it worthwhile, some of which stems from the very concept of evil embodied by a cell phone.

Far more interesting, however, is Yeong-ju’s descent into wacked out kindergartner. Had anybody told me Phone featured a horny, scratching and screeching 6 year old, I of course would have made a place for it in February’s Month of the Vertically Challenged Villains but alas, this film hedged its marketing in its cellular premise. Yeong-ju’s outbursts are actually quite fun, an odd shifting seesaw between genuinely creepy and hilariously over the top. It helps immensely that one of the first scenes of the film features an extended conversation about how Ji-won’s sister has The Most Perfect Family Ever. By ten minutes in, we WANT daddy to turn to Jack Torrence, daughter to pull an Orphan and mother to drink it all away with a soju growler.

High Points

Phone doesn’t shy away from its Electra complex, something that’s not necessarily easy to watch but ultimately entertaining enough to justify its inappropriateness

Low Points

At about 100 minutes, Phone isn’t overly lengthy but considering the repetitive K-ghost scares and empty red herrings, the running length does harm the ultimate throughline of the story

Lessons Learned

No one commits suicide in an elevator

In death, your hair will grow to appropriate J-horror ghostess lengths

Tolstoy may have claimed that all happy families are alike, but clearly he never flew to Seoul and met The Perfect Family and its Possessed And Horny Daughter

Rent/Bury/Buy

Phone is streaming on Netflix, which is about the amount of effort you should put into seeing it. Diehard Asian horror fans will find a nice balance of the conventional genre with a few surprises, but overall, Phone isn’t really worth, you know, phoning home about.

That was bad, let me try again: don’t waste peak time minutes on Phone.

Okay. I can do better: Phone will receive good reception if--

Oh hell I got nothing. Can’t we just go back to tin cans and call it a day? Better yet, how about I just transfer you to New Korean Cinema's Blogathon, a great resource with several more days filled with Internet writing on all things Korean cinema (and most likely, far fewer cell phone puns).

What's Great About The Good Son

There are few things I love more than modern trash. The fact that inappropriate and slightly offensive films like Orphan  can still be made in the era of enforced child labor laws makes me smile in ways that should frighten social workers.

Joseph Ruben’s The Good Son is like a delicious candy bar made from cocoa you know was picked and harvested by overworked 3rd world children who sleep 12 in a room and are too exhausted to cry.

Despite being a mainstream release that, at the time, starred the hottest child actor since Shirley Temple, The Good Son is pure B-movie material, an over-the-top mean-spirited Bad Seed takeoff created to shock.

Quick Plot:

Big-eyed 10 year old Mark (post-Huck, pre-hobbit) promises his cancer-ridden mother that he won’t let her die.

Cut to her funeral in the red-brown sands of Santa Fe.

Dad David Morse (who due to The David Morse Code, can only be cast as a douche or kind-hearted yet ineffectual supporting character, the latter which he embraces with a perm here) has to head to Japan to “close a deal,” the nature of which is never revealed but for some reason, lingers as ominous. Responsibly enough, he leaves his mourning son in the care of his estranged (or so it would seem, since the families haven’t seen one another in 10 years) brother, who lords over a stately Maine manor with wife, good son, spritely daughter, and ghost of their drowned baby boy.

We’ve met a lot of very dumb parents in cinema history, but have any quite matched the Evans in impressively low (for a golf score) IQ? When we meet Henry, the boy is sporting a creepy paper machee mask and punching his cousin at the dinner table. 

Two scenes later, he’s killing dogs, dropping a dummy from a bridge to simulate a 10-car pile-up, attempting to push kid sis headfirst in broken ice, and revealing the not-so-surprising fact that he is indeed responsible for kid brother’s death. In an age before Grand Theft Auto, where was this demon child letting off steam before the arrival of Mark?

The quickness to which Henry’s evil develops is on one hand alarming, on the other, expected from an 80 minute thriller that immediately introduces about 9 foreshadowed death traps. In their first playdate, Henry and Mark do the following:

-break windows in an abandoned factory

-climb a precarious 60 ft. high treehouse

-dance atop a deep stone well

-shoot homemade dart guns at cats

-hang out on a rocky cliff

Gee, I wonder if any of these locations and toys will come back into play.

The most important fact you will need to keep in mind watching The Good Son is that Macaulay Culkin was simply playing Kevin McAllister if that precocious 9-year old was never actually left Home Alone. He would still savor inflicting pain on others through crafty do-it-yourself  means; under coddling (and daft) parents, it would just be more obviously diagnosed as sociopathy.

This also brings me to my favorite The Good Son anecdote, newly discovered (thanks IMDB) and quickly rising the ranks of my all-time behind-the-scenes stories*. SPOILERS follow

So if you haven’t seen this movie, stop, cue it up on Instant Watch, and see it for yourself. Advertised as “one of the most shocking endings ever!” it delivers on so many inappropriate levels.

Anyway, now that you’ve witnessed The Best Ending of ALL TIME, here’s the great trivia behind it: Macaulay Culkin had to complete a part of his dramatic fatal fall sans stunt double. Scared and reluctant (because, you know...the kid was TEN), his parents promised him a BB gun upon completion of the stunt. 

A BB gun. For falling 30 feet on film.

If you’ve seen Henry’s tumble into sharp rocky cliffs, you know that young Mr. Culkin was probably shooting his eye out before the premiere.

Prior to the other night, I last saw The Good Son in a movie theater in 1993. The impression it left on me has lasted through my teens and twenties. Not that it ever actually scared me: if my long-lost cousin essentially threatened my life within two days of meeting him, I’d simply tattle. Though that would be sad if it meant no campily awesome film got made as a result.

Because I love trash.

Seriously. This began as another old-fashioned Doll’s House review, but within the first paragraph, I realized that I do indeed want to have this movie’s children. Its good sons, of course. 

Immediately after watching the film, I gave it a 5 star rating on Netflix.

Immediately after watching a very good movie the next day, I turned to my cats and said “That was really good. But it wasn’t as awesome as The Good Son.”

I don’t know quite how else to say it. The Good Son is fast, tacky, trashy and mean. It’s like a stolen sports car covered in candy corn. The only thing you can learn from it is to not raise a sociopath, to not share a bedroom with one, to not go ice skating with one, and ultimately, to pick up on EVERY SINGLE WARNING SIGN THAT YOUR CHILD IS EVIL.

So really, just watch the movie. With alcohol. Or alter a drinking game where instead of taking a sip at every blatantly evil thing Macaulay Culkin does onscreen, you slap your cheeks with your hands and scream at your television.

It will do you good.