Any horror movie that turns a big profit at the box office, which is quite a lot of them, is almost inevitably awarded a sequel. The low cost and high reward model of the genre means it’s no great shakes to churn out fresh installments to capitalize on a hot brand, but nobody could have guessed that Orphan would be joining the club, and with a prequel of all things.
William Brent Bell’s First Kill comes to theaters later this month, and the logistically improbable return of star Isabelle Fuhrmann has unsurprisingly been generating most of the buzz in the buildup. Lest we forget, the opening chapter was released when the star was 12 years old, and she played a 33 year-old masquerading as a 9 year-old.
A full 13 years on, Fuhrmann returns as the diminutive murderer at the age of 25, but First Kill is a prequel set before the events of Orphan, which is enough to fry your brain if you think about it too much. De-aging, forced perspective, and camera trickery are all at play, but right before the unlikely second outing arrives, fans have been reacquainting themselves with Esther on Netflix.
As per FlixPatrol, Black Adam director Jaume Collet-Serra’s solid chiller has landed a spot on the platform’s global charts, which could drum up some additional anticipation for First Kill. The introduction to Fuhrmann’s tiny little psycho netted $78 million at the box office on a $20 million budget, which should be the benchmark the impending prequel is aiming for at the very least.