Movie/TV Show Reviews:

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  "Orphan" from 2009, despite a few holes in the script and poorly motivated twists and turns of the characters, was a decent film in its convention. The creators managed to keep Esther's true identity a secret until the last moment, thanks to which the viewer got a very interesting narrative flip at the end. In Rise of Evil, we know who Esther is from the beginning. Despite this, the creators manage to surprise the viewers with an unexpected twist that changes our idea of the presented world and the characters. Unlike the original from 13 years ago, the prequel does not take itself completely seriously. The creators behave as if they gave up on all illogicalities and decided to squeeze out of Esther's story all its macabre and comic potential. In the 2009 film, the title character was a tragic figure in her own way. In the prequel, however, she is one-dimensional, comic-book evil. She looks more like a Chucky doll than a real person. Interestingly, in The Birth of Evil, social themes appear: the subject of inequality, elites placing themselves above the law, structural violence inscribed in social hierarchies. However, all of them are given in such a consciously caricatured form that it is impossible to take them seriously. "Birth of Evil" gives the impression that someone decided to shoot a prequel to "Orphans" in the convention of a very bad movie. However, I have the feeling that the viewer gets much less fun from this class C cinema than the creators. In the prologue set in an Estonian insane asylum, the director decided to max out the grotesque image of Eastern Europe known from the "Hostel" series. Unfortunately, the proposed convention gets tiresome quite quickly. The film's interest is rekindled by a great narrative flip, but then the script just falls apart. The way the action develops, it no longer defends itself even as a game in a deliberately bad movie. It is also clear that the acting team is not fully coping with the lifting of the convention. Julia Stiles is perfectly on point as Esther's new mother. She is helped in this by the fact that her character is the best written of all appearing in the film. Unfortunately, the other supporting characters are weak, and the actors playing them behave as if they do not know what they are actually playing. Esther, as in the first film, plays Isabelle Fuhrman. The actress is 25 today. The creators of the prequel used a whole range of tricks to believably present her on screen as an adult woman looking like a nine-year-old: from special perspective shots that optically reduce the actress' height to make-up to make her face look as childish as possible. Fuhrman undoubtedly has great potential. She proved it already in her first film, where she perfectly showed the aggression, resentment and passions of an adult woman trapped in a child's body. In "Birth of Evil", however, the creators lack some idea for this role. All in all, I appreciate the narrative twist and some great moments, but I'm staying a little bit sidetracked by this movie. I understand that there are viewers who will have a great time on it and will find themselves in the convention. Although I usually like this kind of cinema, it just didn't work for me.

  12/7/2022