Ian B (ButtonFilms)

Well this movie sure came outta left field. The trailers looked boring, the premise didn't sound like anything special, and I don't know anyone who actually saw it in theaters. But to my surprise this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and psychologically disturbing horror films I've seen in the last few years. Orphan doesn't pretend to re-invent the "evil kid" sub-genre, in fact it actually has fun with the cliches one would expect from this kind of movie.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra keeps things moving at a nice pace and uses some great camera tricks to deliver the scares, while Jeff Cutter fills the movie with some of the best cinematography you're likely to find in any genre. The script, while predictable, actually goes to some pretty dark and disturbing places while giving us some actual character development and a great twist ending that I never saw coming (even after many predictions).

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that there's some real emotion and great performances to be found here. Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard anchor the film extremely well as the paranoid mother and sympathetic father, but the real stars of the film are the kids. I usually think child actors ruin movies (especially horror movies) but Isabelle Fuhrman as the evil Esther more than holds her own against every adult in the film. I hope she doesn't get pegged playing evil kids now, because this girl has some serious talent. Aryana Engineer, who plays the couple's deaf daughter Max, is also one to keep an eye on. Good job on casting actors who actually treated the material seriously, as it definitely brings the film up to another level.

You can add Orphan to the list of the best evil kid movies out there (The Bad Seed, The Omen, Village of the Damned, etc). Yes, the movie is fairly predictable up until the third act and isn't exactly breaking any new ground here. It's the fact the movie does everything you'd expect going into a movie like this so extremely well. It delivers everything you want, and then some. Great performances, characters with depth, plenty of scares, beautiful cinematography, plenty of disturbing material and a great twist ending. This is definitely a movie to check out and one of the better surprises the genre has seen in the last few years.

And the award for worst movie of the year goes to! Holy crap this was a huge disappointment. The original Wrong Turn was the first to take us out of the jokey Scream era of horror and back to something violent and scary. Wrong Turn 2 was a great surprise as it turned out to be just as enjoyable as the original and twice as bloody. What the hell happened here? Everything about this movie was just god-awful! The acting was atrocious, the dialogue was a joke, the CGI deaths were laughable, and everything just seemed so lifeless and by-the-numbers. This is proof-positive that the only reason Wrong Turn 2 turned out so good was because of director Joe Lynch. Avoid this abortion of a movie at all costs.