Personal Response

The Orphan starts off seeming like an innocent film which makes you feel sympathy towards Ester as she is an orphan and different to all the other girls that she is at the orphanage with. When the mother starts to realise something may be wrong with Ester, the beginning of the film makes you think that it is not true what she is believing.

You find out why the Mum and Dad want to orphan a child through a dream sequence where you see the Mum bleeding and losing a child but it shown in a very gory way, emphasising that it is infavt a dream sequence.

Many things happen in the film that are signals to the viewer that Ester is not right, and is in fact evil. The scene where Max and his little sister have hurt a pigeon by accident and they are trying to save it and Ester comes along and throws a rock on the pigeon making sure it dies; she claims that 'it should be put out of it misery' but it shows that she is not right

The best bit of the film is when the ending is revealed. Ester is actually a dwarf woman, not a child, who tries to make a move on the Dad. When the Dad rejects Ester she murders him. This was our favourite bit of the film because it is so unexpected and this bit of the film has the most tension.