Kate Colman [Vera Famiga] and John [Peter Sarsgaard] have decided to take on another child in their already family of four. After being approved for the adoption they visit the local orphanage and decide to adopt the more mature loner, Esther [Isabelle Fuhrman]. Esther then begins acclimate herself to her new surroundings and at the same time showing us how a pretty little Russian princess can turn your life upside down.

I’m not a fan of the stereotypical horror movie. However, for some reason this movie totally worked for me. I walked out of the theatre with a wide smile knowing that I was thoroughly impressed by the movie. But here’s the thing, after thinking it over for a couple of nights I realise just how average and stereotypical the film is. The plot is really copy and paste of any generic horror film: enter outsider, outsider seems nice, we notice something odd, something odd becomes something horrible then all hell breaks loose. I think the trick to it was that I did not see the twist coming. I know, I tend not to see these things coming anyways but I think it was a really good twist that you won’t be able to predict while watching the movie, even though some may say the twist is inconsequential. The movie would’ve ended exactly the same whatever the twist in this film was, but it was still a fun ride.

Esther is really the highlight of the film, as would be expected. One really odd, but fun, part of her character is that they say she is originally from Russia but when we first meet her she has a perfect American accent. However, as the film progresses and she gets eviler and eviler – I don’t care if that is or isn’t a word – she speaks with a more prominent Russian accent, it begins with a few hints of the accent till eventually she could be speaking Russian and you wouldn’t be able to tell.

Now the thing about horror films is that the always have a lot of really preposterous things happen. I think that it sounds pretty odd to me that a woman would use the fact that she lost her third child before birth to push her to adopt a child. Now I think that it’s an amazing thing for someone to take it upon themselves to become the caretaker of a child who is not their own. However, to make the adoption look like it’s the replacement for the child that she never had makes me think that she is just a little girl trying her best to make sure her life plan of having three children and all these other princess like things in her life and that didn’t set well with me as a character choice for Kate.

In the end I think this movie should be reserved for the horror fans only but it’s definitely worth a rent when it hits DVD. The film may not scare you but it will definitely shock and at some points sicken you.

IMDB says 7.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 55%

I say 6.5/10