‘Orphan’ Download and Reviews
“Orphan” Movie Details
Orphan tagline: Can you keep a secret?
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| Directors: Jaume Collet-Serra | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| IMDB Rating: 7.2/10 out of 19,788 votes |
“Orphan” Movie Review
“Orphan” Plot Summary
A husband and wife who recently lost their baby adopt a 9-year-old girl who is not nearly as innocent as she claims to be.
The best straight horror film in quite a while
When I was younger, I was a scaredy-cat when it came to a great many movies. I saw Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners at a young age which left me with a solid week worth of sleepless nights, I was terrified of the evil vines in Jumanji and I even had a fear of serial snipers after watching Dirty Harry. However as I grew, I became braver and less haunted even by horror films until I finally became numb to almost everything. Certainly the odd scene of a fright flick would give me a start and perhaps even a bad dream, but few films have been able to recapture the restless nights of my youth. Until I saw Orphan
While perhaps not as great a compliment as it once was with Hollywood’s iron grip on the horror industry, Orphan is the downright creepiest and most frightening pure horror film in a many, many years. The Orphanage (similar name a coincidence, I assure you) from last year gave me some haunted evenings but is more of a dramatic thriller. Countless films have capitalized on the evil child angle as a platform for the scares, in fact with the now even more relatively awful The Unborn coming out this very year. But those who have crafted such a film intelligently and to a genuinely disturbing end are sparse and in between. In the case of Orphan a much of this success is due to young Isabelle Furhman, who gives an incredibly intense and disturbingly authentic portrayal as Esther, the Russian orphan. Complimenting that role are four other outstanding performances by Aryana Engineer and Jimmy Bennett as Esther’s now sister and brother, and Vera Farmiga and Peter Starsgaard as the adopting parents. If there have been better performances in a horror film I haven’t been privy
Finally recovering after the devastating loss of their unborn child, Kate and John Coleman (Farmiga and Starsgaard) feel it is time to welcome some new life into their home and settle on the different but charming and incredible gifted 10 year old Esther. Things could not be better for this broken family, Esther bonds immediately with young Max who is a mute, and fits wonderfully in with her two loving parents. But then, strange occurrences begin to arise, and Esther always seems to be there and soon Kate begins to think, as the movie’s tagline of the film implies, there’s something wrong with her
In almost every horror film ever made, we have a central protagonist who is scoffed at by everyone and their mother at their wild claims of a killer, an alien, strange occurrences etc. In Orphan it is Kate who is the sole voice of desperation, but what makes this film work besides the wonderful acting job by Farmiga is the back-story of loss and her former alcoholism which sheds doubts on her suspicions. This coupled with Esther’s seemingly endless cunning and manipulation of Kate’s children makes for a frustratingly disturbing series of events. Director Juan Collet-Serra, who helmed 2005’s House of Wax, chooses to keep the gore restrained, tension high and focus on some equally tragic human elements about a broken marriage and what broke it apart. Collet-Serra holds no punches, and is unafraid to go all the way into truly disturbing territory and includes many elements of the anti-Hollywood horror film and is fairly light on the cliches. The final twist is shocking (if you say you knew it you’re lying) and brilliantly explains all the former questions the audience demands. Be warned, just because Orphan is not as bloody as some makes it no less disturbing and I applaud its ability to give me an uneasy sleep and a shot of much needed nostalgia
Read all my reviews at www.simonsaysmovies.blogspot.com
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‘Dreamcatcher’ Download and Reviews
“Dreamcatcher” Movie Details
Dreamcatcher tagline: Four friends hung a dreamcatcher in their cabin. It’s about to catch something it cannot stop.
 Dreamcatcher DVD Cover |
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Roberta Cavell |
“Dreamcatcher” Movie Review
“Dreamcatcher” Plot Summary
Friends on a camping trip discover that the town they’re vacationing in, is being plagued in an unusual fashion by parasitic aliens from outer space. add synopsis
Well-adapted Stephen King story.
At first glance, Lawrence Kasdan might seem an odd choice to be directing a slasher/science fiction movie based on a Stephen King novel. But the story revolves around a group of friends who grew up together and who are having an adventure in the woods, albeit with an extraterrestrial, so it works out quite well. William Goldman also wrote the screenplay, so this film has a good pedigree
The four friends grew up together in a small Maine town, and what binds them to one another is their encounter with saving a retarded boy, Duddits, from being tormented by the school jocks. Duddits isn’t what he appears to be, however, and through their friendship, the four acquire extra-sensory powers – being able to read other people’s minds, being able to find lost things, etc
The four guys are out on their annual getaway in the Maine woods when a lost hunter staggers into their cabin one day. He’s sick, though, and in due course it’s revealed that he’s been infected by some alien organism, which resembles a large wormlike creature that has grown inside him. It escapes and kills one of them, and then the extraterrestrial appears and takes over the body of the remaining guy (the other two were off on a beer run).
The film is about stopping the alien from taking over the Earth. Its plan is to deposit these worm creatures in the reservoir that provides Boston’s drinking water, so that they can infect the population and multiply. The alien hits a snag, though, because he’s using the body of a man who can communicate through ESP, and his remaining friends realize what’s going on and set out to stop him
One of the flaws in the movie comes about with the introduction of Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore at this point. They play the leaders of some special ops force whose job it is to track and eliminate extraterrestrials. It was necessary for the story to advance to have the presence of this military unit, however, it didn’t make sense to have the two best known actors in the film chewing up unnecessary scenery. Lesser knowns would have worked better and these characters roles subdued
I won’t spoil the ending here, but overall I thought this was a pretty entertaining film.
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‘Total Recall’ Download and Reviews
“Total Recall” Movie Details
Total Recall tagline: They stole his mind, now he wants it back.
 Total Recall DVD Cover |
Actors:
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Bartender |
“Total Recall” Movie Review
“Total Recall” Plot Summary
When a man goes for virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet for real, or does he?
One of Arnie’s genuine best performances ever.
I remember when I was about 12 years old I used to watch this movie a lot and it had a strange effect on me because it is so bizarre and so violent, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Also, that woman with three boobs was enough for me to sit through the rest of the movie just to see again!It takes place in a dismal future where colonies have long since arisen and decayed on other planets and mutations are as rampant as corruption. Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker named Douglas Quaid who has recurring dreams about a trip to Mars and a mysterious brunette there. His hottie wife (Sharon Stone) is unimpressed by this brunette who keeps turning up in her husband’s dreams, but mostly he just can’t get over this strange need to go to Mars. I have to say, however, that based on his dream, which we see at the beginning of the movie in which he falls down a hill and breaks his face mask and then his eyes pop out of his head, doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of thing that would make me want to go to that place, but no matter. The movie really gets going as soon as Quaid goes to a company called Rekall that sells implanted memories, so basically you can travel anywhere you want to go in the world and be anyone you want. There’s no danger because you never leave the Rekall offices, but there’s always the chance of an accidental lobotomy. Almost immediately after hooking him up to their machines, he wakes up a completely different person, convinced that he is no longer a happily married construction worker but a secret agent on the run from an evil dictator of Mars named Cohaagen. At this point all hell breaks loose and the movie gets really good. It’s a little confusing, but for the thickness of the plot it’s amazing how well presented it is. Quaid is suddenly unsure who he really is, and when at one point he is receiving instructions from his other self, the self on the other side of the Rekall implantation, about how to remove a tracking device from his nose (in one of the movie’s most memorable moments), it doesn’t make things any easier for him to understand. There are tons of great characters, impressive sets, amazing special effects and brilliant performances despite the occasional cheese moment (such as that bizarre mutant at the end chanting ‘Open your miiiiiind..’ over and over). Read Volume 2 of my 50 Amazing Movie Facts on Hollywire and you’ll know what I really mean. The movie has the same brutal feeling as RoboCop, and director Paul Verhoeven has really shown that he knows how to do action sci-fi. This is definitely one of the genre’s best!
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