You know a film is hardcore when a nine-year-old bashes a nun on the head with a hammer and has her deaf little sister help her dump the body. Going into Orphan I was less than enthused at the prospect of having to sit through another “evil little kid” movie, especially after fiver nights of “Save the children” pandemonium on Torchwood: Children of Earth. Much to my surprise though, Orphan delivered as a sly, well-made and surprisingly brutal horror thriller, albeit one that’s a buffet of been there/done that screenwriting. But you still get into the story, and it still somehow manages to chill you, plus we’re actually given an ending that’s less than obvious.

“There’s something wrong with Esther” goes the tagline of Orphan, and this can be taken on a number of levels. Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) is a well-spoken and mature 9-year-old girl who was adopted from a Russian orphanage by a US couple who later died in a fire. (Hint. Hint. Trouble ahead.) John and Kate Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga), meanwhile, are a young couple that recently suffered the stillbirth of their third child. It’s hinted at that it might have something to do with Kate’s previous alcoholism, but all seems forgiven as the two look for an older child to adopt and to “share the love they were going to give Jessica [their third child].”

It’s further implied that John was unfaithful at some earlier point, which begged me to wonder whether this was a none-too-subtle jab at another John and Kate, the one’s of reality TV fame that have made parental dysfunction a spectator sport? But I digress, this is Ester’s story, and it is a messed up one. For Esther and her perfect posture and her Victoria-era Raggedy Annie style of dress hide a Machiavellian mind and a malicious temper. In these sorts of movies, the filmmakers tend to paint themselves in a corner. The kid is evil, but even when an adult is beating even an evil kid, it’s still child abuse. There’s always the supernatural solution, but that feels like a cop out every time it’s used in one of these.

The biggest surprise of all though is just how adroit the film is at letting Ester get completely medieval on the family she’s adopted into. Let alone the plague she is on the younger deaf girl, making her the witness for all the more heinous doings. Esther even once holds a knife to the throat of her brother, threatening him into silence and mocking him when he wets himself. Cold, but it helps make Esther the precocious little girl you love to hate, and the shame of it is that she’s kind of adorable and you’d like to like her. It’s not the same with, let’s say, Macaulay Culkin, who when dropped off a cliff in The Good Son created more smiles than sobs.

Unfortunate these are the only things that make Orphan atypical. It always surprises me in these movies when the pieces lie like bread crumbs on the floor and no one hears the crunching under foot. Sure mom’s a reformed alcy, but isn’t it usually the Mom that knows first when something odd is afoot? Sarsgaard is so perpetually clueless that he might as well be walking around saying, “But nothing bad can possibly happen.” The warning signs are really telling and you’re forced to wonder just why it takes so long for everyone to play catch-up since Esther starts stirring stuff up within the first five minutes. It all leads to the inevitable showdown in the dead of night with mom racing home before her family goes the way of past Esther-related “accidents.” Yawn.

The movie’s got some solid credentials though. It looks great and it teases enough with the thrills to be compelling. But the time we come to the final curtain though it feels like the film has stretched on a little too much and is clearly straining to fill in some time before the big finish. The stupidity of the characters, as I said, is also grating because there are only so many mysterious accidents one can take in a time period of a few weeks before you have to cash out. Still, there’s a lot to enjoy in Orphan, enough bizarre and outright brazen violence to every now and then make you say, “No they didn’t.” Manipulative? Yes. Cheap and ineffectual? Not hardly.