Slick thriller "Child of Darkness": actors, creators, plot

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Child of Darkness directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (actors: Isabelle Fuhrman, Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Jimmy Bennett) tells the audience the intriguing story of a Russian orphan who terrorizes the couple who adopted her, once again proving that proven Hitchcockian tricks still work great.

Political Correctness Above All

Such a sonorous title of the film "Child of Darkness" is due to the dubbing that accompanies the picture, in the original the name sounds much simpler and more serene - "Orphan". In it, the viewer will not hear a word about the Russians, as domestic distributors were worried about the fate of this creation in Russia. And in Estonia, most likely, they will also not hear that dear Esther was undergoing therapy in their mental hospital.

Storyline

A apparently quite prosperous married couple, having lost a child, decides to adopt Esther, a Russian orphan living in a shelter. They are not embarrassed that the girl wears, without taking off, vintage dresses andstrange decorations - black velvet ribbons on the wrists and neck. The fact that the baby for her age perfectly performs Tchaikovsky's musical compositions on the piano did not arouse much suspicion. After all, the child is kept emphatically modest and dignified, her good looks are standard. The youngest daughter, the six-year-old deaf-mute Max, is immediately imbued with an arrangement for her new sister. But the eldest child, Daniel, on the contrary, throws tantrums to his parents demanding that his adopted daughter be returned to the orphanage, which is explained by the couple as he enters the rebellious time of puberty.

Further events taking place in the film thriller "Child of Darkness", the actors who took part in the filming, are called the main intrigue. At the beginning of her stay in the foster family, Esther only smiles and blinks innocently, but after that … Then she will take a cobblestone and, with pleasure and professionalism, will finish off the bird shot by Daniel. Either she pushes a teasing classmate down a hill, or she pits her parents against each other … And this is only the first demonstration of her potential for truly diabolical cunning, ingenuity and cruelty. Such a character introduces the film "Child of Darkness" to the viewer.

Actors and roles

The description of the plot presented above makes it clear that Esther's unbridled temper and fear of the other children's new sister are not all manifestations of the subtext embedded in the picture. The acting performance of all manifestations without exception, according to critics and the audience, can be considered 100% realized. The actors of the film "Child of Darkness" were imbued with the atmosphere of the project and proved their worthin the acting field. An unfortunate exception is Peter Sarsgaard, who played the role of the father of the family too sluggishly and reservedly, as if not understanding the director's ideas and the meaning of everything that happens. The rest of the cast are amazing.

A particularly impressive character is the deaf-mute Max played by Ariana Engener and, no doubt, Esther with the mysterious face Isabelle Fuhrman. Here these two perfectly turned out to be the leading pair of antagonists, and not the notorious confrontation with Vera Farmiga invented by screenwriters David Johnson and Alex Mace. Of course, it is noticeable that in the film "Child of Darkness" the actors and roles were selected carefully and with high quality. But if the creators had chosen a different scenario, for example, as in The Good Son, that is, if they had focused on the opposition of children, then the effect of watching the movie would have been much deeper. Vera Farmiga, Karel Roden (a doctor from the hospital) and CC H Pounder (a sister of mercy from the orphanage) did a good job with the embodiment of their characters. The actors and roles of the film "Child of Darkness" will stir the minds of filmmakers and viewers for a long time.

A scary story without the paranormal

It would not be superfluous to clarify: in this film, the viewer will not deal with another manifestation of supernatural forces. "Child of Darkness" (the actors who played the main roles are listed above) is a thriller in the best traditions of the genre, at the level of the reference "Hand Rocking the Cradle". Diligently building up a web of psychology on a plot about a cuckoo, gradually cleverly destroying the nest in which he found himself, debutant screenwriter DavidJohnson - just a little overdone. This confirmed one simple truth: the main thing in a thriller is not the psychology of the action, the main thing is speed, which the brilliant Hitchcock proved a long time ago. And director Jaume Collet-Serra managed to overcome the annoying and annoying looseness of his debut creation "House of Wax" in 2004 and delivered this thriller really effective. The director gave preference to the injection of horror, pushing aside the visual beauty. Only the climax of the action bloomed with violent colors of the author's psychopathic thought.

Similar

In terms of tension and intimacy, the picture to some extent resembles the film "Joshua", in which Vera Farmiga also played, and also a foster mother, but the little tomboy intended to bring her and her husband to a psychiatric hospital in this project. Looking at the design of the poster (the image of the main character), a parallel is involuntarily drawn with the film "Case No. 39", "Yulenka". Although its climax and individual details, the film is still closer to Poison Ivy, Infatuation, Fatal Attraction and other demonic stories about young children.

From love to hate…

In general, "Child of Darkness" (whose actors were in the epicenter of everyone's attention after the release of the picture) is another variation of the well-known saying that love and hate are only one step apart. No matter how much a person loves someone, but if the object of his feelings begins to threaten the lives of dear people or the entire world order, then he breaks with himany contacts or in especially dangerous cases ceases to exist. But do not delve too deeply into philosophical reasoning, just watch the movie and do not get too scared. There are things in our life much worse than a fierce girl from Russia.