Details

Release year: 2009

Storyline

A husband and wife who recently lost their baby adopt a 9-year-old girl who is not nearly as innocent as she appears.

Top credits

Directors

Jaume Collet-Serra

Writers

Cast

Vera Farmiga — Kate
Peter Sarsgaard — John
Isabelle Fuhrman — Esther
CCH Pounder — Sister Abigail

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Did you know

• Earlier drafts of the script included more information about Esther's past and explain why she attempts to seduce her adoptive fathers. She was molested by her father for years, starting when she was an infant, destroying any future chance of her having her own children. Her father later took another lover, telling Esther because of her condition, she could never be a real woman. She murdered them both. After that, she worked as a prostitute in Estonia for years. When she was arrested for this, she kept up the pretense of being a child to stay out of jail and was sent to an orphanage. Esther sees herself as trapped inside the body of a child, and it disgusts her. She wants to "grow up" and be a wife, a mother, and a lover (what her father considered a "real woman"), and tries to find "love" where she thought she once had it as a child, with her new father. She was ultimately sent to Saarne, the mental institution, for murdering an entire family after rejection.

• Actress Aryana Engineer, who plays Max, their completely-deaf biological daughter in this film, is mostly deaf. She has Cochlear Implants which enhance her abilities to hear and speak.

• Isabelle Fuhrman auditioned for the part of Esther while wearing an old-fashioned dress and ribbons around her wrists and neck.