But that didn’t prepare me for the actual reveal.

Did anyone else notice how subtly they start showing her arms, with hair on them?

It is shocking when you see it. It no longer is when you know she’s not. That may just be my perception, but I react the same way even to great horror films. Not in terms of shock but in terms of scares. Sometimes something is portrayed as threatening, but by the time the film is done the film has convinced you that what seemed threatening in fact wasn’t. This is common in ghost story films like The Sixth Sense, The Others, and The Orphanage. They’re all relatively scary ‘while’ you’re watching them, but the shift towards the end of each in regards to the ghost’s motives make it much less scary every repeat viewing. They persevere and hold up to repeat viewings anyway because they are all very good films that can scare, not scary films that rely on scares to be good.

In the case of ORPHAN, to me, when you no longer view the little girl as a little girl the whole landscape changes for the worse. The film relies heavily on your belief that she’s a little girl for shock value, which I don’t mind because I enjoyed it and was relatively shocked about as frequently as they intended, but when the key ingredient to the shock is replaced with its polar opposite the desired reaction won’t be there a second time.

This is the biggest reason I gave the film a B minus. I think it’s enjoyable to watch once, but I don’t think it’s nearly good enough to hold up to repeat viewings. I know that each time I watch it will be much less enjoyable than the time before it.

I was trying to avoid the *spoiler* but I guess it’s gotten to be somewhat common knowledge now. It was the fact that she turned out not to be a child. It negates the shock of seeing a studio horror picture have the audaciousness to depict a child in that way, and as bluntly as they do.

It’s similar to hearing if some of Sacha Baron Cohen’s subjects were in on the joke in one of his films. It’s not shocking if the most shocking element is removed.

In your opinion, the fact that she wasn’t a child after all negated the terror of having her do all the terrible things? Or is it the fact that she was clinically insane and therefore we “expect” her to do terrible things?