68% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 72 reviews)
Runtime: 99 minutes
Directed by: William Brent Bell
Starring: Isabelle Fuhrman, Julia Stiles, Rossif Sutherland (yes, Donald’s son), Matthew Finlan, Hiro Kanagawa
From: Paramount Players
Orphan: First Kill… imagine if 1980’s Italians had made Orphan!
I realize the movie is also streaming on Paramount Plus but I’ve never used that service (hopefully its owners are treating it with more respect than what the dumb bastards have done with HBO MAX… oof), I can use the AMC A-List app and from what little I had heard beforehand, it seemed best if you’re around a crowd-and the last part was true. I am a big fan of Orphan-as I wrote about late in 2016-so it was a no-brainer to check out the sequel… even if the very idea of this sequel and its premise is rather absurd if you have viewed the 2009 movie.
Turns out, they went with the camp route, deciding to became absurd as if the Italians of the past had done either a sequel to an American movie or a ripoff of same. That may sound implausible given the startling twist in the original but it’s true. Orphan is steely in nature, set in a wintry snow-covered Connecticut as it’s a psychological tale where the lead girl tears apart a family and the mother in particular—she goes through a lot. The sequel at least isn’t a rehash of the original and instead does different things, no matter how improbable.
The setting is also snowy but otherwise it tells quite the tale, one which is not as good or as interesting; does it mean that it’s bad? IMO, no; thankfully the crowd did help. While not rowdy or overtly vocal, at least there were gasps, laughs and other appropriate reactions. Is it as bonkers-or as fun-as Malignant? No, although that’s an awfully tough task for many genre pictures; First Kill was still schlocky entertainment which gave me enough thrills, bloody moments and camp to entertain me.
It was nice to see Julia Stiles again after all this time although Isabelle Fuhrman was the highlight performance-wise. Her performance rocked-nevermind how absurd the entire concept was. The film did attempt to make it work via practical effects and that aspect will receive little criticism from me-what little CG there was… whoo boy did that not look good theatrically! I’m not sure if the hazy cinematography was done to try and make the central conceit work but overall the movie managed to work in a bizarre 80’s Italian horror picture sort of way.
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