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WARNING: Major spoilers for the movie Orphan, including the twist.
Let’s play a game:
A little girl–five years old, maybe six–rushes out of a building. The sign above it says: “School for the Deaf.” She hugs her mother, who greets her in American Sign Language (“Hello, Max!”) They sign cheerfully about Max’s day; at bedtime, Max wants her mother to read her a story. It’s a picture book about a child whose baby sister “went to Heaven” before coming home from the hospital. (Max’s baby sister, Jessica, also went to Heaven before coming home from the hospital; her mother doesn’t want to read this story, but Max insists). Story finished, Max removes her hearing aid, turns off the light, and goes to sleep.
Max’s sister, Esther, is nine years old; the family adopted her just recently. Esther says she is “different.” She’s from Russia, but speaks perfect English with a slight accent. She cuts her food perfectly–so perfectly that brother Danny thinks it is “weird.” At school she wears gorgeous, old-fashioned dresses when other girls are wearing jeans and tee-shirts. She paints like a gifted adult. While taking baths, she sings a song that’s way before her time: “That’s the story of, that’s the glory of looooove!” She understands the word “fuck” as more than just a naughty word that adults say sometimes (“That’s what grownups do. They fuck.”), expertly loads a gun, puts on a black dress and make-up and tries to seduce her adoptive father. (“What are you doing, Esther!?”)
What is Max’s disability impairment? What is Esther’s? And why can we recognize Max’s within five seconds of meeting her, while it takes us nearly two hours to learn–pardon the phrase–what is “wrong with” Esther?
It would be easy to pin this problem on some difference between “visible” and “invisible” disabilities. And it does involve that, I guess…if one considers who is doing the looking.
But, in the case of the new movie Orphan, it’s especially important who’s doing the showing; what stories the filmmakers are using Max’s and Esther’s disabilities to tell.[1]
Orphan stars Vera Farmiga (Joshua, a film with a lot of similar themes) and Peter Sarsgaard (Flightplan, Rendition) as Kate and John Coleman, whose third child died before she was born. They decide to adopt, to “give the love we had for Jessica to someone who needs it,” as Kate says.
But shortly after Esther comes to live with them, weird things start to happen: the girl who made fun of Esther at school slips off the slide at the playground and breaks her ankle, the orphanage’s Sister Abigail disappears after visiting the Colemans, John and Kate find themselves increasingly at each other’s throats and, eventually, Kate is busy Googling antisocial personality disorder. “I think there’s something wrong with Esther,” she says throughout the film, in one form or another.
Eventually, Kate contacts the orphanage that Esther originally came from, and learns that it’s not an orphanage: It’s a mental hospital.
Was Esther born there? Kate wants to know. She has no idea how a little girl could end up in such a place. The doctor says: What little girl?
Esther, you see, is not a little girl at all. Aside from being a serial killer, she has a form of hypopituitarism–panhypopituitarism[2] is my guess–and is thirty-three years old. Her name’s not Esther, either.
Thus, the filmmakers set up Esther’s biology as a deception in itself. The doctor at the mental hospital tells Kate that Esther’s been “passing herself off as a little girl” for years. She is as marked by her impairment as Captain Ahab is by his, or Bond villains by theirs. But Esther’s crime is not just having things “wrong” with her–it’s that everyone had to work so hard to spot those things.
Max is marked by her condition just as much as Esther is; her mark means the same exact thing, though in a different way. Max is everything that Esther isn’t: an American native, the biological daughter, the child who really is a child, the disabled girl who the audience reads as disabled clearly, right away: the Deaf school, signing, Kate saying that “she can hear just enough to lip-read.” By the same token, the filmmakers choose to hide Esther’s condition, to make her seem one thing when she is really something else.
The division between Max and Esther is a division between “visible” and “invisible” disabilities; a division between good cripple and bad, Madonna and whore. And it doesn’t matter who is which.
Let’s play another game:
Esther–thirty-three-year-old Esther, who is often read as a nine-year-old girl, but isn’t one–is going to be a nanny for the Coleman family. (In honor of Peter Sarsgaard, let’s steal a bit from my favorite movie of his. It’s okay: this is a horror movie, after all). Perhaps her condition helps her work; maybe kids find her easy to like and open up to. Esther meets her new charges: son Daniel is nice enough, but his sister Maxine doesn’t talk and sometimes makes strange noises Esther doesn’t understand. Even creepier, when Esther talks to people she can sometimes see Maxine watching her intently from the other side of the room.
In the kitchen, Esther accidentally cuts herself chopping vegetables; Daniel comes running when she screams, but Maxine is drawing in the living room, as if nothing happened. Esther thinks that perhaps she didn’t cut herself at all, but was manipulated by some strange spiritual, mind-controlly force, and Maxine had something to do with it. (Let’s steal from The Omen and Village of the Damned while we’re at it).
Requisite weird stuff happens–I like flying furniture, personally–and Esther decides to high-tail it out of there. Nervously she plans her escape: whispering to herself, she decides to climb out the back window at midnight. But when she gets there, Maxine is there already! As if she read her mind! Then, because we are mean-spirited and really tired of this game, Maxine’s powers implode the house Carrie-style and everyone dies. The end.
Orphan constructs its disability narratives, but the film did not pluck these narratives out of thin air. The “disabled people are deceivers” meme is everywhere. If we’re not conning Social Security or abusing handicapped parking, we’re busy being either “addicted” to pain medicine or “not really autistic,” and sometimes we’re magically creating an “illusion of competency.” If we can do something today, but not tomorrow, we are lazy. If we see, hear, feel things other cannot–or just don’t take our meds–we are scary.
And people with disabilities, who are constantly told what we “really” are or aren’t, come to believe it. We hesitate to identify ourselves as disabled, because our problems are nothing like “real” disabled people’s. Or we are afraid of getting read as currently able by other disabled people. This way, society has a handy tool to oppress us and divide us at the same time.
[1] Even I’m constructing the girls’ disabilities in my own way, leaving little word bread crumbs so that, perhaps, you might figure out just what’s “wrong” with Esther much faster than I did.
[2] Bonus trivia awesomeness: Actor Mario Bosco (NYPD Blue) has panhypopituitarism; here’s an interview with him.
Wow. You draw the connections so well; the “reverse” movie hypothetical in particular really drives home the points you are making. Still a lot swirling about in my head, will take a little while to digest. Great post.
Whoa! You just blew my mind.
Although, before you said she had hypopituitarism, I had thought maybe she was autistic, with her quietness, her painting, her knowing “adult” things and trying, clumsily, to act on them.
And, before reading your post, it hadn’t occurred to me at all that Esther might also be a representation of disability! I had twigged to how Max represented the angelic stereotype — and how her disability might be used to make her even more helpless and vulnerable — but it hadn’t occurred to me that Esther might be the other side of the coin.
Rats. Maybe I do need to go see it now!
Lindsay said:
OMG! You just blew my mind, because I’d thought the same thing (i.e. that perhaps Esther was autistic) for all the same reasons you did.
Which is strange, because there are other “evil” children in movies who have these sort of traits: precociouness; a “perfectness” of language that’s odd in its perfectness; being avoided by other kids even if adults think they’re charming; giving the audience a general sense that “people skills” don’t come naturally to them at all and that all their interactions are heavily practiced or “acted,” possibly coupled with times the “act” totally falls apart in a way that’s supposed to shock the audience or other characters.
Esther, for instance, wears ribbons around her wrist and neck; if people try to remove or touch them, she screams over and over. There’s another scene where the family finally takes Esther to a therapist; she charms/cons the therapist into thinking that she’s perfectly fine, but the mother is unstable. While the therapist is telling the parents this (basically, “Esther is fine, but you may have problems”), we see Esther locked in a bathroom stall, screaming and kicking/banging on the door. As if, after being so careful to appear “fine” to the therapist, her brain just said: “Enough!”–though it was also a handy way to scare the audience, too.
While in most evil kid movies I’d recognize these as serial killer traits or space alien traits or Antichrist traits or whatever, Orphan drives home the idea that “There’s something wrong with Esther” so much that I figured there had to be something else unusual about her besides murdery-ness. And thanks to my own personal biases, I thought the “something else” was going to be autism for a really long time.
Epic “me, too” response is epic.
Well, i haven’t seen this film, but i have to say it’s interesting that it comes so soon after another horror film with a very similar title and disability themes…
I thought from reading your description, until i got to the hypopituitarism bit, that perhaps she would turn out to be either the reincarnation (with retained memories) of, or “possessed” by some dead evil person, perhaps with riffs on the “indigo children” New age woo about “gifted” kids (many of whom are of course on the spectrum) and/or the old “changeling” legends (which are also, of course, linked heavily to autistic and/or otherwise disabled kids).
(Sorry to link to myself twice in one comment – it feels a bit egotistical! Not intended that way, just things i happen to have written about before…)
There’s also an old short story – “The Bright Boy” by Arthur Machen – which has basically the same plot (though obviously, as the title suggests, with a boy rather than a girl). I tried to find it online, as it’s probably out of copyright, but it doesn’t seem to be (I have it in an old pulp paperback collection called “Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, Volume 2”). IMO it isn’t one of his better stories, and i don’t know if it’s particularly well-known, but it might have been an influence (although i think the “creepy child turns out to be an even creepier childlike-looking adult” story has been done a few times, i just can’t think of any others).
There is a very real horror for me in the idea of being that adult who is the size of and is seen by others as a child – i think perhaps because it seems like the “eternal child” stereotype of disabled people actually made (very cruelly) true. I wonder (but seriously doubt) if a horror film has ever been made from the perspective of such a character…
Shiva said:
I think I found it! Project Gutenberg Australia has “The Bright Boy” in a collection of Machen’s called Holy Terrors. Awesomesauce.
I’m a total nerd, so I’ll respond to your points later. (Squee! New story to read!)
I think that your interpretation of Esther is really interesting and I hadn’t thought of her in that way until you connected the dots for me.
However, I have to disagree with Max being shown as disabled. On the contrary, I thought it was a pretty positive portrayal of a deaf child. Max is never really shown as that helpless. She is always shown as a normal little girl and I don’t remember her deafness ever being a handicap in the film. If anything, she is more “abled” than her brother, because she actually prevents Esther from harming him twice, something that her mother fails to do until the very end of the movie.
Melissa – i’m too tired to resapond to you properly right now, but you need to read up on the social model of disability and the difference between “impaired” and “disabled”. “Disabled” doesn’t mean “unable” or “helpless”.
Tera – while doing some research for a post i’m working on on Tod Browning’s “Freaks”, i discovered that one of the stars of that film, Kurt Schneider (aka Harry Earles or Harry Doll) – who i believe had an impairment very similar to “Esther”‘s – played adult criminals who posed as small children as part of their scams in several films in the 1920s-30s: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/12/freak_baby_munc.html
You just spoiled a great movie.
I havent seen good scary movies that have you stuck to your chair for that long and for you to spoil it kind of sucks maybe u have a starve for attention but people waste their time reading ur shitty half assed explanation and u know what u suck at this so stop spoiling movies and find something else to do
This movie was really really good and for you to write this review spoiled it for a lot of people. The whole point of going to watch this movie was to find out Esther’s secret and now you just spoiled it for a lot of fans. Anyways I think you should just let people watch the movie and keep your not so good review to yourself. It’s a shame that you would spoil such a good movie for others.
Hi, Melissa,
Like Shiva said, “disabled” doesn’t mean “helpless” or “unable to do anything at all.” [Word geekery warning: the Greek prefix that does mean “un-” or “not-” is actually “a”–the Greek prefix “dis/dys” seems to mean more like “poor” or “difficulty with”].
But also according to the social theory of disability that Shiva mentioned, a person is “disabled” when their impairment(s) (i.e. the things they actually have trouble with) interact with their environment. So it’s really odd to ask: “What disability does so-and-so have?” Which I totally did. (In my defense, I had “condition” for a while; that works for hypopituitarism, but deafness can be caused by many different conditions, so it didn’t quite fit. Perhaps “diagnosis” or “impairment” would be better…).
Also, if you consider the social model of disability, you could argue that neither Max nor Esther are “disabled” in Orphan. Max’s hearing impairment is accommodated for in her environment: everyone communicates in ASL, she interacts with lots of other deaf people (at school), etc. And one could argue that having hypopituitarism actually enables Esther to kill people. (Which is a highly dubious thing to be “enabled” to do, of course, and part of why the movie is problematic).
I definitely do think that the film…pits Max’s deafness and Esther’s hypopituitarism against each other, and that’s part of why Max and Esther are foils.
“Bright Boy” is still in copyright outside Australia. Though it is as you say not one of Machen’s best nor most widely known. Interesting to speculate whether it was Machen’s story that influenced the film.
you guys complain about this person spoiling the movie but there was a warning in the beginning. just don’t read it you dumbasses.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to explore all possible avenues to movies you watch and books you read. That’s commandable. What isn’t is the “hair spliting” politically motivated agendas that seem to try and give a movie/an action/a word more depth than it legitimately has. In this case your assessment of “Oprhan”.
Personally, I doubt the movie makers of “Orphan” are anti-disability or adoption. I think they figured unless they use a twist ending of some sort [a reasonable twist-ending in this case; very jaw-dropping, loved it!! ;)] the psycho-child who burns houses when her/his attempt to take over a family or win affection is met with rejection has been done a thousand times and their movie would fall flat. I’ve also liked the pace with which the conflict was allowed to grow; the dynamics of/in the family and the superb acting from all (except Max, who didn’t impress me as a very good child actress).
One more thing:
There are bad people in every class of society. An abused child may grow into the defender of innocents, the way I fancy myself as being, for example; or a psycho who goes after them. One developmentally challenged person may decide to not let his/her diability hamper their growth, another may feel the world owes him/her something. It all depends upon the individual and how they chose to deal with the problem life throws their way. That, I believe, is why “Esther” came from a mental instituion, instead of being plucked from an orphanage for kids with disabilities/developmental challenges. Because she’s violent, not just hypopituitaritic!
[Sorry for the last comment. Feel free to delete it :cool:]
all i can say is that its a very wonderful movie… very nice, i didnt even predict what exactly would happen. good twist!
@abesheet
I don’t think this is “hair-splitting” at all. Disabled people are frequently displayed as intrinsically scary. The people behind this movie probably didn’t MEAN to imply that ALL disabled people are scary, but the fact that such offensive descriptions are so common feeds into a public perception of disabled people which has damaging real-life consequences.
And another thing. You said:
“That, I believe, is why “Esther” came from a mental instituion, instead of being plucked from an orphanage for kids with disabilities/developmental challenges. Because she’s violent, not just hypopituitaritic!”
See! You have succumbed to another dangerous bigoted myth from the movies – that mental illness and violence are inextricably linked.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/02/03/mental-illness-does-not-predict-violence/3869.html
Lindsay said:
Although, before you said she had hypopituitarism, I had thought maybe she was autistic, with her quietness, her painting, her knowing “adult” things and trying, clumsily, to act on them.
OMG! You just blew my mind, because I’d thought the same thing (i.e. that perhaps Esther was autistic) for all the same reasons you did.
Me too.
Hi, sanabituranima! Welcome!
You said:
Yes. Thank you so much for pointing out the “people with mental illness are violent” myth, which many, many horror films (including Orphan) perpetuate. Not to mention how much power that myth has in real life.
Well, aren’t all movies based on the concept of the fear for the different or unknown? in a way, such movies are very discriminating towards those who are different – physical or psychological.
fortunately, the majority of people do not buy such things as gospel and take a horror movie for what it is: fiction. to draw any such conclusions as in this article goes beyond what people take home from a movie like this (usually a good old scare and the knowledge that it is just a movie).
my suggestion: stop spreading such bogus paranoid hypothesis and focus more on what’s going on in real life.
besides, hypopituitarism does not manifest itself in any way as portrayed in esther. such people suffer from tumors, crossed eyes and they do not look like normal children, especially when they are lucky enough to live to the age of 30.
“fortunately, the majority of people do not buy such things as gospel and take a horror movie for what it is: fiction.”
That’s not strictly true. Portrayals of people in fiction do have a knock-on effect on public perceptions (witness Birth of a Nation, for example.)
this story was so scary……. when i saw it i was shock coz a 9 year old girl who play the role of esther was so professional…she knew how to play her role very well… congratulation for your movie.. it was so remakable!!!!!!!
You seem to be leaving out something huge in your reversal game with Max & Esther- Esther is a dangerous serial killer- among some of her crimes: she has burned down a house killing everyone in it, smashed to death a nun with a hammer, stabbed to death her adoptive father, tried to burn alive her new brother, then, when that didn’t work, put him into cardiac arrest while he was hooked up to a breathing machine while in the hospital, and also tried to injure or kill her new sister a number of times by: pushing her into the path of an oncoming vehicle, and another time, putting the car, which carried just the little sister in the back seat, into neutral & releasing the break, subsequently sending the car- and the little girl- flying backwards down a hill with oncoming traffic…
My point is that your reversal of views regarding the girls’ disabilities just doesn’t work- you cannot ignore the fact that what’s wrong with Esther is that she’s a damn psycho- with or without her disability- the “strange occurrences” have nothing at all to do with her disability & everything to do with her criminal behavior- it’s clearly obvious that Esther’s disability was in no way used to explain WHY she is a disturbed monster- it was used as a way to explain why it took so long for some to figure it out (she looks like an innocent child)- which leads me to make another distinction- her disability is used to explain HOW she is able to deceive (again, because she looks like an innocent child) not WHY she is deceitful- and i really hope that the majority of people watching The Orphan are intelligent enough to distinguish between the two, and don’t leave the movie subconsciously believing that “disability equals deceitful equals baad “.
And regarding your last few paragraphs about society’s depictions/stereotypes of the disabled- all I can say is that we cannot control what others do- no matter how morally wrong, unsympathetic, or frustrating their actions may be- but what we CAN control is how WE react- how we let them make us feel- i find it helpful to try & focus on that which i can change (IE myself, my reactions, my actions) and not on that which i cannot change- but it isn’t always easy, nor am i always capable!
and for the record, I am actually very scary, to myself, without my meds- no joke
Hi, Christie Bella,
I disagree. Her disability was used to explain why she was killing people. Her MO was to try to seduce her adoptive father, and then, when he rejected her (because she looks like a child), to kill everyone in the family out of revenge.
See it seems that you are ignoring some facts to make these connections- and I want you to know that I certainly am aware of, and have seen, many examples of the media- be it in movies, advertisements, or other, make subtle (and some times even blatent) implications or stereotypes, or send out disparaging messages regarding varying groups of indivifuals (sometimes intentionally & sometimes just out of ignorance)- and if or when I see it, I am offended, and outraged- but I just don’t feel that this is the case here.
I don’t see in any way they the movie was implying “the reason Esther is a deranged killer is because she has a disability (ie looks like a child)(?!)- it’s just not the case- they explained that she was a very violent individual- again, WITH OR WITHOUT her disability- so the reason Esther is a killer is because she is disturbed & violent.
Her MO was to seduce the father- isn’t that behavior- seducing a married man-your adopted father, no less- regardless of whether you are a child or grown- in & of itself considered to be wrong? She was attempting to commit adultry with her adopted father! She was able to get away with it for so long because she has a disibility (a rare one) that results in her looking far younger than she actually is- her disability was used to explain HOW she was able to do this for so long without appearing suspicious, (again, not WHY she was doing it- she was doing it because she is a severely disturbed & violent individual, one who had a disability that, let’s also not forget, she chose to hide from others- even going so far as to wear false child-teeth and wrap her chest flat)- that is, until people began to pick up on her DISTURBING BEHAVIOR (upon which, they were killed).
Again you are trying to draw connections that are far reaching, if even there at all (I’m not quite sure why). Either way, I want to be sure that you know I am just having a healthy disagreement, and am in no way arguing- sometimes intent gets sort of misread online in forums or on blogs, because you can’t see my facial expressions or my body language. interesting blog btw!
i really want to see this movie, but my siser says that is not the best choice if your only 12, but what she doesn’t know is that i have seen so many horror films and they just dont’t bother me at all, i have seen rated R movies so many times, i never ever get nightmares from them, i handel horror movies better than some adults, dont underestamate me just because i’m 12, i may be 12 but i probalby seen more horror movies than you have
Led here via FWD and the Carnival.
You are SO going on my reading list. I hadn’t yet put my dissect the visual quotes and shorthand stereotypes ‘glasses’ to disability in visual media far less disability as horror theme.
Granted horror isn’t my thing, but I’ve seen my own invisible disability used in similar fashion, time and time again and being enraged, I think, never thought of dissecting how disability is played for fright (vs drama) in the media.
*goes to read your comments now*
this is a super good post. I actually haven’t seen the movie (although from what I read, I was impressed that Max’s deafness seems to be treated in a matter-of-fact way) but I liked your points about invisible disabilities and how it’s other people who make them invisible; how deafness could be the spooky invisible disability instead, depending on the presentation/POV.
WOAH!!!! ESTHER CREEPED ME OUT !!!!! I WATCHED THE MOVIE AND WOW !!!! SO MUCH BLOOD !!!!! I CAN FEEL SOMEONE ALWAYS NEAR ME EVEN THOUGH NO ONE IS THERE LIKE THE GIRL THAT ESTHER PUSHES DOWN THE SLIDE!!!!
Scary movie indeed! Can somone tell me what is the words the mother wrote on the plate for her dead baby. I know it end with, “I didn’t know you, but I love you”.
I thought it was a really good film and quite scary and i thought it was really good that they came up with that she was a 33 year old woman and i think it was really nice that kate did a plque for her dead child so that they wont forget her.When esther cut all of the flowers out i was like what a really horrible thing to do its the best horror film i have ever watched!
indeed it was a good movie but not the best in my opinion ester did do some HORRIBLE THING I CANNOT SAY I DONT BELIEVE YOU
I thought it was a really good film and quite scary and i thought it was really good that they came up with that she was a 33 year old woman and i think it was really nice that kate did a plaque for her dead child so that they wont forget her.When esther cut all of the flowers out i was like what a really horrible thing to do its the best horror film i have ever watched!
Teri, Thanx for this blog/website whatever it is…as u can tell I’m not to “up” on technology. I LOVED u’r “reverse” scenario examination of “max” and “esther”. ….
I enjoyed u’r “examination/analysis” 4 many reasons….my best friend childhood friend was “deaf”- I also grew up around other deaf children in my school/scouting troops, etc….. I, like “Esther” have an EXTREMELY rare physical condition (medical paper written about me), and several other rare conditions (I was “studied” by NIH)….. I have also spent time in a mental instituion….HORRIBLE! and have a mental dx….complex. So, I could TOTALLY relate to Esthers rare physical condition and your own physical conditions. It IS hard being different – and sometimes HARDER when one “appears normal” but it not – the “judgmentalism ” and lack of compassion from others , can be devastating…..and I was VERY appreciative of you putting forth your own ideas about how viewing audiences could be questioning their “assumptions” about disability etc…instead of just falling into the “trap” the movie makers made for us!
I also noted u list several “Unusual challenges” of your own….ergo: lending some “believeability” to your own questioning….. I AM familiar w/ autism – have cousin with it. Thanx to your link – now have a “vague” idea of the brain conditon you have (thanx). But, LOL, I am TOTALLY “right brain” dominated (to the detrimant of “left brain learning” despite my “verbosity”. So, we must be “polar opposites”??) I have 3 questions: MOST important question: #1. WHAT does Esther have (psychiatric)? Is is “antisocial personality disorder” or “pschopath” – I am VERY disappointed that the movie , critics, and audiences seem to not “know”, “care” or explore this isssue…Why is everyone so hung up on her rare physical condition, especially since it IS her mental health that ultimately leads to her “undoing”….. #2. MOst embarrassing question: you list yourself, Tera, as “queer”- do you mean you are attracted to people of the same sex as you? Or do you mean to say, you are “odd”? (Sorry, for being so daft- but one of MY problems is a failure to “relate” to others – NOT Autism or Autistic spectrum disorder – just kinda being REALLY slow on the uptake – especially in relating to others……NOW, if there were “visual” “nonverbaL’ cues – you were presenting – unlike you – I would pick up on them in a flash! LOL). Which brings me to another observation – the beautiful “bridge” picture you have posted here – for someone who suffers from a disability in the Non-verbal range- you certainly have made EXCELLENT progress in overcoming that – by choosing such a “captivating” photo for your website! Darn, it’s so late at night (braindead) I’ve already forgotten question #3……So I’ll end with a comment = Whoever accused u of “spoiling” the movie for people who haven’t already seen it is -why r you on this website, if u weren’t prepared for a “spoiler”?? Just doesn’t make sense…..PS. Would have liked to email u personally- but couldn’t figure out how- did’nt know if you’d respond back – and won’t know how to get back to this site – should u chose to comment back….so, good luck. I liked ur site….
Haha it took me until the very end of the movie to understand why she locked the door to the bath room and worried about people seeing her, shes more developed than a 9 year old should be and if she was caught like that her cover would be completely blown
is really a good film. I don’t mind horror films but I prefer adventures films. Sometimes the splatter’s not good.
Hard words break no bones.
Isabelle Fuhrman your beautiful and a awesome actor and I want to meet u and get your autograph cause I LOVE u I’m 10 years old how do u make yourself look different your awesome. :). Love a HUGE fan lauryn Tuttle:)
Isabelle furhman your amazing how the heck do u sing so good? Your a wonderful actress ibwant your autograph!!!!!!!!!
Omg omg omg Isabelle I want u to sign an autograph 4 me I want to meet u
Isabelle Fuhrman is an awesome actor and I really want to męét her and know all about her I try to sing glory of love but it’s not as good as her so I go on u tube and sing along with her lol:)
Right, ok…
I’m afraid you’ve rather missed the point. I really enjoyed the first half of this article, so it’s a shame.
The filmmakers have specified that Esther was sexually abused by her father from infancy, but when her condition prevented her from maturing he got bored of her and “replaced” her with a conventionally proportioned adult woman and told Esther that he didn’t want her any more because she wasn’t a “real woman” and never would be.
I am sensitive towards those hard of hearing (I live with a man who is completely deaf following surgery on brain tumours) and the mentally ill (I am, and have been for many years now, bipolar). I don’t think that this film is slanderous towards the disabled or mentally ill. In a way it’s a shame that they left out Esther’s history in the end, because as much as I disagree with your analysis of the film and your opinion that it reinforces negative steroetypes, I think that some other people may have drawn the conclusion that Esther’s behaviour was solely due to resentment of her condition. I don’t think that is due to negligence on the part of the director or filmmakers, that’s just how it is.
In some ways Esther is a victim, not of her condition but because of her childhood. However that does obviously does not excuse serial murders of adults and children alike.
As far as the character of Max is concerned I think it was a sensitive portrayal (the actress herself is hard of hearing but not mute) and handled with dignity. She is better at handling herself than her brother and shows great courage and helps to rescue her mother. ANY child who goes after a murderer to save their mother is a total hero. It’s up to you whether or not you think that her lack of hearing makes it more of an acheievent but I think the fact that she managed to help sae her mother and herself despite not even having the small improvement of her hearing aid (stolen by Esther) is actually positive reinforcement by the filmmakers that one is not made helpless by a disability, nor should thy be considered so. It is your character which defines you, not your senses or your appearance. If anything, that’s what you should have drawn from this film.
Quickly a last word on the fact that she is an orphan and whether or not that’s a misrepresentation of orphans: no, it isn’t. It’s a plot device. Deal with it. Taking issue with that is like saying you take issue with the fact that the three little pigs were allowed to build a straw house given that it would lack structural integrity. Sometimes things need to happen for the sake of the plot. That’s how stories work.
Actually, I like your review. I always look for the underlying messages myself. And adressing the comments that say you’ve analyzed too far in depth, they must not know much about a writer or a thinker for that matter – which every movie creators is and they ALWAYS have underlying messages such as the one you decoded (it’s in their detail oriented nature). Most of the time they’re surprisingly intended for either a starting point or something to expand the storyline (even if they don’t expect the audience to connect the dots as well as yourself). Interesting points, I enjoyed your post. Great movie too, I enjoyed the intended psychological thrill lol
Also the storyline – she is both physically and mentally different. Her body is behind hormone wise but she feels the need to compensate – which she does through her intelligence, music ablility, communication skills, clothing styles, hair and also her ability to con – out wit – seduce and murder. I think she feels sexually inadequate as well, which may also lead her to feel the need to engage in her chosen lifestyle (whether antisocial personality disordered or not), passing herself off as a child and living in that world makes her feel more adequate or even more advanced, which I think she lives for that due to her inability to grow properly into a woman. I would imagine she is also infertile. I think she kills because she is frustrated and can’t find love. In the end despite all her efforts and attempts at some kind of normal – her feelings that she doesn’t fit in the adult world or a childs world remains and it causes her great pain.
Amaziiiiiiiiiiing i love orphan ❤️
It is your character which defines you. In one of my story plots, the main protagonist is an adopted North Korean girl named Marina Kim. It is revealed later on, she has Attention Deficit Disorder. [Attention Deficit Disorder means she can be on the impulsive side. Attention Deficit Disorder is NO excuse for bad behavior].