A 24-year-old as a small child? That doesn’t sound like a good idea even on paper, and when it comes to shooting a movie, it can only be doomed to fail, right? The cast and crew behind Orphan: First Kill still tried and 24-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman is cast again as the horror child Esther – after Fuhrmann had played this role 13 (!) years ago in “Orphan: The Orphan”.
Screenwriter David Coggeshall, among others, shows on Twitter which tricks one had to work with to turn Fuhrman back into a little girl without having the budget for a Marvel blockbuster.
In the picture we see Matthew Finlan, Julia Stiles and Rossif Sutherland as members of the Albright family that Esther is staying with in First Kill, and on the far right, Isabelle Fuhrman. And we see the enormous platform shoes that the other cast members apparently had to walk around in to make the height difference to Carter-as-a-little-girl believable:
By the way, the author of these lines has already seen “Orphan: First Kill” and can assure you that this is not the only trick used in the film. Body doubles are also used frequently and very obviously: Whenever Esther’s face cannot be seen in a shotis clearly not Fuhrman, but a child actress in front of the camera.
The illusion of the 24-year-old woman as a nine-year-old child is not 100% convincing, but it is not really disturbing, because “Orphan: First Kill” has enough other qualities, as in our DashFUN review (3.5 of 5 stars) becomes clear:
However, opinions on this differ somewhat. In the latest edition of our podcast, the author of these lines discusses with moderator Sebastian and Yves from Moviepilot, for example, who didn’t like “First Kill” at all:
Warning, spoilers: Incidentally, “Orphan: First Kill” is a prequel to the original “Orphan” and tells how Esther, who is actually over 30 years old and whose name is Leena, escapes from an Estonian psychiatric hospital and pretends to be the disappeared daughter of the Albright family in the USA. And soon the supposed child causes fear and terror again…
