Spoiler Warning: Be: First Kill
After more than ten years of waiting, Orphan fans finally got to see the prequel Be: first kill. The film follows Leena Klammer (Isabelle Fuhrman) as she breaks away from the Saarne Institute, a mental institution in Estonia, and escapes to America by posing as the missing daughter of a wealthy family. Fuhrman is joined by Julia Stiles as Tricia Albright, Rossif Sutherland as Allen Albright, Hiro Kanagawa as Detective Donnan and Matthew Finlan as Gunnar Albright in the new episode.
There were several concerns when the film was announced, including how they planned to make Fuhrman look younger using old-fashioned techniques. Instead of a ten-year-old playing a ten-year-old, she’s a twenty-something playing a kid. Body doubles, platform shoes and creative camera angles allowed the actress to come back and reprise her role.
Director William Brent Bell noted that the film would not move forward without a “major twist”. As the team ramped up the film’s twist, and Bell noted that he enjoyed it, even though he looked for it, it nearly ruined the film leading up to its release.
The twist came too early
Unlike most of the twists and turns in the third act, this one came about midway through the movie, making it a solid second act. It is revealed that Tricia and Gunnar are responsible for the disappearance of the original Esther. Tricia said her son had been too rough with her and it was “too late” for her to help her daughter by the time she knew. Tricia covered everything to protect her son so that the only child she had left would not be sent away. It would be strange if Esther, having just returned from a kidnapping, went missing again, so Leena and Tricia carry on as if nothing has changed.
The three grow suspicious of each other, which becomes the entire premise of the second half of the film. Leena tries to push them into the path of an oncoming train after Tricia tries to poison her with food, which Leena knew because she fed the food to a rat living in a vent in her room. In retaliation, Leena gives Tricia a smoothie containing the dead rat. The final act comes when the two Albrights decide to kill Leena and stage it as a self-inflicted death. This doesn’t go to plan, and everyone but Leena dies when the house goes up in flames.
While the reveal worked with the events that followed, it felt like the movie dragged on a bit as the surprise twist came halfway through rather than during the final act. While it made up for the ending, the twist would have ruined the movie and given no direction if Gunnar and Tricia hadn’t decided to kill Leena. That said, since there were only a handful of ways the plot could go after the reveal, the twist left the film feeling a little predictable.
It didn’t feel like a twist
While it felt like a surprise at the moment, looking back, it didn’t really feel like a twist in the same way that Leena’s true identity was revealed in the original film. There was always something wrong with the way Tricia and Gunnar reacted to the news that Esther had been found, something that couldn’t just be written off as a frightened teenage boy or a mother shocked by a grenade. When Detective Donnan discovered that the DNA profiles did not match, it was only a matter of time before Leena’s robbery happened. It wouldn’t make sense for the detective to tell everyone who she was at that point in the movie, so they needed another way of explaining someone who knew who Leena was now that the information was out.
If you really think about it, this was the only way the movie could succeed. Orphan set the precedent that someone always finds out who Leena really is, and it would have felt fake if no one ever found out first murder. That makes it less of a twist and more of a necessary plot beat tied to a “twist” that’s more about the real Esther and not about Leena.
But it was something orphan: first murder needed
Was it one of the few avenues the plot could take? Yes. Was it as surprising as it could have been? No. But it gave the film the life it needed. When doing a prequel, especially when the public is already aware of the secret, the struggle then becomes how to keep the premise interesting and engaging without pulling in any information just to introduce something new.
We already knew she had a family that had previously died in a house fire. We already knew she had escaped from a facility in Europe. We didn’t know how she did it, but we knew it happened. Adding that the family she was trying to infiltrate was responsible for their daughter’s death, meaning that from the moment Leena showed up, they knew she couldn’t be who she said she was, an excellent game of cat and mouse ( or rat) created that, while slow at times, kept the audience on their toes. If the writers had done something different, the movie wouldn’t have been as entertaining as it was.
Leena finally met someone who wanted to do the same things she did. While Kate (Vera Farmiga), the mother in the first film, did a fine job of killing “Esther” to protect her children, Tricia is willing to do it to protect her secrets and her child.
While Leena’s journey has come to an end for now, we may see more of her soon if Fuhrman has something to say.