2009’s Orphan contained a massive twist when it was revealed that newly adopted 9 year-old girl Esther is actually 33 year-old Leena Klammer, who has spent the majority of her adult life posing as a child and committing plenty of murders along the way. It was one hell of a rug pull, but it presents a number of potential pitfalls for upcoming prequel First Kill.
As well as the fact that audiences are already clued in to Esther’s origins, William Brent Bell’s follow-up also arrives over a decade later with 24 year-old actress Isabelle Fuhrmann reprising the role as an even younger version of the character, and it’ll be interesting to see if the forced perspective and visual effects techniques are able to pull it off. At the very least, it should be much more convincing than Gary Oldman kneeling on his shoes in 2003’s Tiptoes.
Julia Stiles is one of the new additions to the cast of First Kill, and despite admitting that she wasn’t sure about signing on to the project in the first place due to ongoing concerns over the Coronavirus pandemic, the script and its big twist convinced her that it would be a movie worth making.
“I do not watch horror movies and when I was sent the script for it I was like, ‘I don’t know. I’m not into that genre’. And I was also really worried about going back to work after COVID. And the script was so dang good, I couldn’t put it down and I was so surprised by the twist that I’m not gonna give away that I think you’ll like it.”
There’s no word on when we can expect Orphan: First Kill to hit theaters, but production wrapped in January, so it might even be ready in time for this year’s spooky season. The first film debuted in the summer and went on to earn $78 million on a $20 million budget, and the combination of solid reviews and sheer curiosity surrounding a prequel arriving a dozen years later could realistically see the second installment perform even better than its predecessor.