Esther is an adult woman. She looks only 9 years old, but she is actually 33 years old. With a naive and clever appearance and a twisted and extreme heart. In fact, she is a mental patient in Sarner institutional mental hospital. She suffers from a rare pituitary hormone disorder, which makes her short, extremely violent and dangerous. She has killed seven people before.
Esther is a Russian orphan. She survived a fire in an orphanage. She is knowledgeable and sensible in appearance, which successfully attracted John and his wife to adopt her and become a member of this family of four. After integrating into the new home, Esther's true face gradually exposed. In order to get back at Brenda, a girl who made things difficult for her at school, she was pushed off the slide.
In order to prevent her identity from being exposed, she killed the nuns in the orphanage with a hammer. At home, her adoptive parents noticed her abnormality and took her to see a psychiatrist. Even the doctor was cheated by Esther. In order to hide the secret, she kidnapped and used Max, the youngest daughter of her adoptive parents, and even set fire to her eldest son Daniel.
Sow discord between Mr. and Mrs. John, and finally tried to get close to the man, John, and brutally killed John. When Kate learned the truth, she had a fight with her and fell into an icy lake.
Personal experience
Esther was born in 1976 (in the movie, she was 33 years old, not 9 years old) because of birth defects. She is very aggressive and prone to violence.
Esther looks like an ordinary nine-year-old girl, smart and cute, but in fact she is not as cute as she looks. There are unimaginable secrets hidden behind her angelic face.
The most difficult thing to understand in this world is a woman, especially a woman with a girl's body but a mature woman's heart-because she has a desire of normal age, but she can never be satisfied, so she can only relieve her inner depression by destroying other people's happy families, and Esther's tragedy comes from this.
As a horror film, director Sheila's grasp of the script can be described in two words: the night full of suspense, the girl who is alone in the film scene without expression, the rather retro dress, and the piano sound that sounds cheerful but unfamiliar.
Everything will make the audience who like horror movies feel numb, and when Esther tried to seduce her adoptive father and tearfully removed her makeup, that chilling, expressionless face brought this fear to a climax: the fake loli finally showed her sinister fangs.
In this film, Esther and her adoptive mother Kate (vera farmiga) are actually spiritual orphans. ?
As a woman who can't develop normally but has a mature mind, Esther is always in a lonely environment-in an orphanage, a pseudo girl in her thirties lives with a group of undeveloped children all day, and there will never be a suitable person to talk to.
After being adopted by Kate and his wife, she had to pretend to be an ignorant person and let Kate teach herself to play the piano. At the same time, she had to be stimulated by Kate and her husband's love show anytime and anywhere to stimulate her mature little heart. Such a woman can't justify herself without some abnormal psychology.
Similarly, Kate is lonely as an adopter. Although she has a handsome husband and a rich life, abortion has caused her great psychological harm. At the same time, her past alcoholism, the pain of losing her son, her mother-in-law's sharp sarcasm and her husband's infidelity all put her under great psychological pressure. It is conceivable that such loneliness tortured her.
Therefore, when two equally lonely women meet, conflicts are bound to break out: Esther, as a pseudo-Lori, will not be satisfied with "playing the poor little girl forever", while Kate, as a mature woman, has to protect her two children and her husband, and at the same time investigate the terrible pseudo-Lori who has been adopted.
Although Esther finally got the punishment she deserved at the end of the film, it is conceivable that Kate's internal injuries will accompany her for life.
Extended data
Whole area
In the movie, the Coleman family lived a life envied by many people. However, everything was quiet and comfortable, and gradually left them with an unexpected abortion. Although this baby who died before birth is the third baby in their family, his wife Kate (Willa Famiga) still can't get rid of this shadow.
Nightmares and lingering sadness, night after night, almost occupy her whole heart, and even the comfort of her husband John (Peter Sarsgaard) is of no help. In desperation, in order to get out of the nightmare as soon as possible, the Coleman couple decided to adopt a child through a welfare institution to comfort the pain of losing the baby. Coincidentally, in the orphanage, a clever girl caught their attention.
This little girl named Esther is not only knowledgeable and skillful in painting, but also precocious beyond her age. She is simply a perfect child. So, after going through all the adoption procedures, Esther became a member of this family of four.
Esther's appearance undoubtedly changed the Coleman family's life. The smile returned to Kate's face, and John liked this sweet girl more and more. Five-year-old daughter Max (Ayana Angel) clings to her new sister all day, and the only one who has a bad feeling for her is another "man" in the family-the eldest son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett).
Perhaps, he is just a little jealous that the arrival of new family members will steal the attention of the whole family? However, with Esther being bullied in various ways at school, everything began to change. The classmate who bullied her was pushed down the stairs, the boy who deliberately alienated her was framed, the talkative nun died tragically, a raging fire, and even everyone including the Coleman family of four began to be troubled by successive terrorist incidents ... What terrible answer was hidden under Esther's angelic lovely face?
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