Leena (Isabelle Fuhrman) mounts a psychological and bloody escape from the psychiatric facility in Estonia where she is under observation. Living with a rare genetic disorder that gives her the appearance of a young girl, Leena finds a missing person report from the United States of Esther, with whom she shares a resemblance. Creating a story of her kidnapping, she goes to the authorities claiming she had escaped her captors and soon she is on her way “home” to Connecticut, but her new family has trouble adjusting to the reintroduction of the girl they had all thought they would never see again.  

William Brent Bell directs Orphan: First Kill, from a script by David Coggeshall, for Paramount, the prequel to the modern classic, Orphan (2009). While knowledge of the original film is not necessary for the story here, watching the films in story order neutralizes the 2009 installment by recapping Leena’s secret right away in the opening act. Without the central mystery, First Kill staggers along for the first half of its 99-minute runtime as it alludes to some of the strangeness surrounding our original introduction to Esther and building an overall creepy and lightly hostile family life before coming out with its own big reveal. The second half of the film, thankfully, has more life to it while the body count rises and the stakes of the film start to come into view. 

Reprising her role from thirteen years ago, Fuhrman brings a menacing tone to the film. Without the pretense of having to hide her identity, Fuhrman can really lean into all the creepy kid tropes right from the get-go as we follow her tentative first steps in adopting this false identity for herself. The filmmaking here opts for practical effects as much as possible, forcing perspective shifts and use of body doubles, so some of the cuts and angles feel a little unnatural, even within the horror genre, but their consistency throughout helps to inform the overall style of the picture. For the most part, the performance is unchanging between the two installments and that is not so much a knock-on Fuhrman, but rather a knock on the script which does not allow for much development to occur, especially nothing organic as everything needs to flow into the original work. 

Much of the drama comes from Esther’s assimilation with her new family and her navigation and course correction when she slips up on certain details and memories. She forms an instant bond with Allen (Rossif Sutherland), the patriarch, who does not seek to pick and pry at what happened to Esther but is glad to have his daughter home again. It reignites his passion for the arts and introduces Esther to working with ultraviolet light to hide secrets in plain sight. Tricia (Julia Stiles), the mother, however, is also relieved to be reunited with her daughter, but she is much more interrogative than her husband and wants to get to the bottom of what happened during the kidnapping. Their older son, Gunnar (Matthew Finlan), is an incredibly thankless role who is really only included for some plot convenience and largely forgotten until needed again. Poor ensemble management is the largest flaw of the film which results in a very clunky delivery as the motivations and arcs of all the characters are not very clear. 

Orphan: First Kill is an experiment in the unnecessary. The events of the film are already covered, albeit briefly, in the big reveal of the 2009 film, so this prequel is not really covering any new ground or shedding light on any major details of Leena/Esther. As a standalone work, it is perfectly mediocre and will scratch the itch of horror fans looking for a lazy night in the house thanks to its direct-to-streaming release. It appears that studios have moved their tried and failed strategy of inundating the big screen with uninspired sequels to streaming platforms, and the proliferation of these second-shelf offerings will only continue to fuel the rise of prestige television. Orphan: First Kill, like so many x-quels rely totally on brand awareness to lure and capture audiences, but it is not enough. There needs to be something new, exciting, and different to keep audiences engaged – one needs only to look at Dan Trachtenberg’s work such as Prey (2022) or 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) for examples of creative angles into a franchise – otherwise, these reheated leftovers are not just unsatisfying, but leave us bloated and full, unhungry for more.