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The first trailer for Orphan: First Kill is here – and, unsurprisingly, it sees Isabelle Fuhrman's fresh-faced villain terrorising another wealthy American family.
Set years before the events of the 2009 hit, the sequel-turned-prequel centers on Leena Klammer, who went by Esther in the first flick – a woman suffering from a hormone disorder that stunts her growth – as she travels to the US after orchestrating an elaborate escape from an Estonian psychiatric facility. There, she impersonates the missing daughter of Tricia (Julia Stiles) and Allen Albright (Rossif Sutherland), Esther, and quickly moves into their home, but Tricia soon becomes convinced that Esther isn't who she claims to be.
Judging from the synopsis and the teaser, which you can watch above, what follows is pretty standard horror movie stuff: Allen, the husband, doesn't believe his wife's concerns, while Leena/Esther splits her time between painting eerie pictures and trying her best to separate them (or worse). If its predecessor is anything to go by, though, it's sure to have a few surprises in store.
What's perhaps most impressive about the clip, however, is how they've managed to de-age Fuhrman. The 25-year-old actor was just 12 when she made the twisty original, and word on the street is that no visual effects were used to make her look younger. Esther isn't actually as young as she presents herself to be, either, so it's kind of wild to think about how Fuhrman was once a pre-teen, playing a 33-year-old disguised as a nine-year-old, and now she's in her mid-20s, playing an even younger version of that same character.
"I love the challenge of being able to play a kid because that's never historically been done in cinema — I was like looking all this up, because I love looking up old movie history and things like that, and I was like, 'Oh, an adult has never reprised the role that they played as a child,'" she told The Hollywood Reporter last year. "Will Smith, for example, recently did that movie [Gemini Man] where they de-age somebody, but to reprise a role that you literally did as a kid as an adult has never been done before. It’s kind of impossible. And we did it.
"We didn't use special effects, we didn't use any crazy makeup tricks. And I think that's what makes the movie work, is because you really can't figure out how I look like a [9-year-old], but I do. It's really creepy."
Written by Scream's David Coggeshall and directed by The Boy's William Brent Bell, Orphan: First Kill is set to release in select theaters, on Digital, and on Paramount+ on August 19. In the UK, it will be coming out exclusively in cinemas.
