THE ORPHAN KILLER (2011)

Streaming on Tubi!
Directed by Matt Farnsworth
Written by Matt Farnsworth
Starring Diane Foster, David Backus, Matt Farnsworth, James McCaffrey, John Savage, Karen Young
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THE ORPHAN KILLER really wants to be the next FRIDAY THE 13TH or HALLOWEEN. It is definitely made by folks like me who loved the eighties/nineties slasher boom. You can almost taste how much the filmmakers want to make their mark in the annals of horror. The thing is, there’s a whole lot of stuff going on that I recognize from other horror franchises happening here. What does distinguish this film from the herd of wannabe slasher icons is that this is an intense and gory film with effects that stay grounded in reality, making the kills all the more effective. Though its intentions are obvious, I can’t help but recommend a film whose serial killer has my own name—Marcus Miller.

The parents of Marcus Miller and his sister Audrey were the victims of a home invasion, leaving the two in an orphanage at a very young age. Riffing on DEXTER, Audrey was adopted by a cop, while Marcus was left to be abused by the nuns at the orphanage. Forced to wear a skull mask and repeatedly beaten by nuns, it’s no wonder Marcus turned out as screwed up as he did. Writer/director Matt Farnsworth is most effective in these flashback scenes at the orphanage, really getting under the skin of Marcus and showing us what made this murderer so murdery.

A few years later and Audrey is being plagued by visions and nightmares of her long-lost brother, and though the revelation that Marcus is actually stalking her comes quick, it does lead to a relentless hourlong cat and mouse game of torture and death. Though the body count is low, the gore is high as Audrey struggles to survive being stabbed, poked, beaten, and sliced by Marcus. This definitely gets gratuitous, and I found myself tuning out to the tortures that occurred in that last hour. The film reflects the struggle between Laurie Strode and Michael Meyers in HALLOWEEN and does so with the addition of copious amounts of blood and abuse. The director tries to shock with repeated scenes some might find sacrilegious with Marcus quoting the Bible while killing nuns and priests. I found the excessive, almost hour-long abuse of a single woman to be the thing about this film that made me wince the most.

Shades of HALLOWEEN and SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT (in its use of religious imagery as fodder for serial killer rampage) permeate the bulk of THE ORPHAN KILLER. But the sheer power of the beating star Diane Foster endures is more akin to Marilyn Burns’ ordeal from TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. Though the gore is definitely inspired on such a low budget and scenes of the killer’s origin were definitely skillfully done, I found the latter half of the movie to be somewhat tedious and a little too obsessed with the torture going on. Director Matt Farnsworth definitely seems to have a lot of talent here and the appearance of John Savage as a cop and Karen Young as a nun definitely makes things a whole lot classier. I’m interested in seeing Farnsworth’s next endeavor, since a lot of promise is shown here in certain places. Marcus Miller is definitely a serial killer with bite. If the director can focus less on gratuitous torture and more on story, I’d be interested in seeing another outing with THE ORPHAN KILLER.

Check out the trailer here!!