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This villain was proposed but was rejected by the community for not being heinous enough or lacks what is necessary to be a Pure Evil villain. Therefore, this villain shall be added to our "Never Again List", where proposed villains rejected by the community shall be placed to prevent future proposals of the same evil-doer. They can be proposed again (with the permission of an administrator) if new elements appear in their series that can change their status as non-PE villains. Any act of adding this villain to the Pure Evil category without a proposal or creating a proposal for this villain without the permission of an administrator will result in a ban. |
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“ | Hello, my name is Esther! | „ |
~ Esther's famous catchphrase. |
“ | Me? I'm not the one who passed out drunk and let Max almost drown in the pond. If it wasn't for John, she'd be dead. And you'd probably still be in jail. | „ |
~ Esther/Leena to Kate Coleman. |
“ | Please... don't let me die, mommy... | „ |
~ Esther's last words before Kate kicks her in the head hard enough to snap her neck. |
Leena Klammer, better known as Esther Coleman, or Esther Albright, is the titular main antagonist of the 2009 horror film Orphan and the titular main protagonist of its 2022 prequel Orphan: First Kill.
She is presumed to be a 9-year-old Russian girl who now has a foster family named The Colemans (Kate Coleman, John Coleman, Max Coleman and Daniel Coleman). However, Esther is actually a 33-year-old mentally unstable Estonian woman who has a hypopituitary disorder that makes her look much younger than she actually is and who has since impersonated a little girl who died years ago at the hands of the horrid Albright family, whose matriarch in particular targeted her life.
She is portrayed by Isabelle Fuhrman, who also played Shoko in Adventure Time and Clove in The Hunger Games.
Biography
Backstory
According to Dr. Värava from the Saarne Institute, an Estonian mental institution, Leena Klammer is a mass murderer who killed the entire Sullivan family after tricking them into adopting her by posing as a runaway. Leena decapitated the father, ripped the mom and daughter’s tongue out with her teeth and ate it, then killed the son by stabbing him. She would usually use her appearance to rob people, but for an unspecified reason (likely the Sullivan father rejecting her advances), she chose to murder these particular victims. For this, she was caught and placed in the Saarne Institute. She was one of the wildest and violent patients, who would always hurt the staff. These behaviors eventually resulted in her being put in a straitjacket; she would constantly get out of them due to her fighting and resisting, but developed several scars as a result. She would later decide to cover these scars by wearing ribbons.
Orphan: First Kill
Leena reportedly murdered an art therapist who did not follow safety protocols, and Anna Troyev is hired to replace her. Leena escapes the institute by murdering a security guard who was attracted to her after luring him into her room. She takes his key and hides in Anna's trunk, later murdering her with a tire iron. Leena researches missing American girls and notices she bears a resemblance to a girl named Esther Albright, and pretends to be her when a police officer finds her.
Leena concocts an elaborate story about how a woman abducted her and forced her to pretend to be her daughter. The Albright family matriarch Tricia takes her in, but notices she seems different; not remembering the death of "her" grandmother, or what type of bird her therapist had. It is later revealed that Tricia was aware that Leena was an imposter because her son Gunnar had accidentally killed the real Esther and she covered it up without telling her husband Allen. Tricia gives Leena specific details about the real Esther's life to ensure her therapist and family friends buy the ruse and no one discovers the truth about Esther's death. Leena and Tricia murder a detective who had discovered that her fingerprints did not match and throw his body down a well.
Gunnar and Tricia attempt to kill Leena when she is not phased by their blackmail attempts, and appears to be making romantic advances on Allen. When Allen goes to an art gallery, Gunnar and Tricia try to stage a suicide, but Leena manages to kill Gunnar with a crossbow, and accidentally sets the house on fire. When Allen returns home and finds Leena and Tricia hanging from the roof during a struggle, he saves Leena but Tricia falls to her death. After Leena's disguise comes off, he is horrified to the point he falls off the roof and died.
Leena is last seen with her therapist discussing her upcoming transferal to an adoption agency, foreshadowing the events of the first film.
Orphan
After living with her new adopted family for several weeks, Kate Coleman grows suspicious when her adoptive daughter, Esther Coleman (actually Leena Klammer) expresses far more knowledge of sex than would be expected for a child of her age. Esther further antagonizes Kate by cutting flowers planted as a memorial to her stillborn child, casually reveals when other woman flirt with Kate’s husband John (given he previously had an affair) and reads intimate details from Kate's diary. She is further alarmed when Sister Abigail, the head of the orphanage, warns her and John about Esther's tendency to be near when things go wrong. Esther overhears this and later kills Sister Abigail by bludgeoning her to death with a hammer. She convinces Max Coleman, Kate’s daughter, to help her with this and they hide all pieces of evidence in their treehouse.
A few days later at school, she opens Max’s brother Daniel Coleman’s backpack causing his books to fall out when he's walking up the stairs. Kate gets out of the car to help him but leaves it running. Esther comes back to the car puts the gear selector in neutral and takes off the parking brake, causing the car to roll down the hill with Max still inside.
Daniel decides to retrieve the hammer which was used to slay Sister Abigail to prove Esther's guilt. However when he reveals his plans to Max, Esther overhears. The next day, Daniel goes to the treehouse and finds it unlocked. He enters the treehouse and searches for the hammer but finds nothing. Esther appears behind him and sets the treehouse ablaze to stop Daniel. She leaves the now-on-fire treehouse and locks Daniel inside, in an attempt to kill him. Daniel climbs out from the treehouse through the window and near burns to death, only ends up falling to the ground, injured and unconscious. Esther near murders him with a brick but Max shoves her out of the way. Daniel is hospitalized cause of the neck injury and abdominal bleeding. Esther then murders Daniel at the hospital but doctors save him. Kate, knowing what happened, furiously slaps Esther and knocks her down and is immediately subdued and sedated.
Esther tries to seduce a drunken John, who finally realizes Kate is telling the truth and threatens to send her back to the orphanage. Esther, mad and hurt, ransacks her room and takes off her clothing/makeup, unwraps her breasts and removes the ribbons around her neck and wrists, revealing she isn't actually a child at all. Meanwhile, as Kate is coming out of sedation, she receives a call on her cell phone from the Saarne Institute. Dr. Värava, who works at the Institute, reveals that Esther’s true identity is Leena and that she's a grown woman with dwarfism. The doctor warns Kate that Leena/Esther is extremely dangerous.
At home, Leena/Esther, hurt from being scolded, murders John, no longer posing as a child. Max witnesses her father being stabbed by Leena and hides in a hamper in her closet. Kate rushes home, only to find John dead. Leena gets a revolver from John's safe, shoots Kate in the arm and hunts Kate down before she goes to search for Max. While firing at Max in their greenhouse, Kate manages to break through from above Leena/Esther and knocks her out.
Leena later follows Kate outside to a frozen pond and lunges at Kate, where they fall and struggle onto the ice as Max watches from a hill above the pond. Max maneuvers herself to grab the gun that was dropped by Kate during the struggle. She fires at Leena/Esther but hits the ice instead, which breaks, causing Kate and Leena/Esther to drop into the water below.
After a brief struggle under the ice, during which Kate is stabbed in the leg and Leena/Esther is elbowed in the face, Kate climbs out partially, followed by Leena/Esther, who pleads for Kate's mercy, still trying to maniplate her (while holding knife behind her back, no doubt to stab Kate with). But Kate isn’t falling for it and furiously responds, "I'm not your f**king mommy!" before violently kicking Leena/Esther hard in her face, breaking her neck and sending her back into the pond, finally killing her as her corpse sinks to the bottom of the lake with blood rushing through the water, while Max and Kate are met by the police moments after as Esther's corpse keeps sinking to her watery grave. With this, the 7 people she had killed, the Sullivan family, Sister Abigail, and John Coleman are finally avenged.
Known Victims
Killed
- Dmitri the Lobby Guard - Head bashed against the wall six time
- Anna Troyev - beaten to death with a tire iron
- Chief Inspector Donnan - Stabbed in the back ten times in the back of the neck by Esther and Shot five times in the chest and head by Tricia (Shared Kill)
- Rat - Accidentally killed by Esther after she gave it food that had been loaded with sleeping medication by Tricia. (Shared kill)
- Gunnar Albright - Shot in chest with a crossbow bolt and stabbed to death with a fencing sabre seventeen times
- Allen Albright - Pushed off of the roof of his house
- Family of four - Decapitated the father, gave a kiss of death to the mother and daughter by ripping their tongues out with her teeth, stabbed the son repeatedly in the head then burned the house down.
- Pigeon - Crushed by Esther with a rock after being shot by Daniel with a paintball gun. (Shared kill)
- Unnamed Boy - Impaled with a pair of scissors off-screen before the events of the film, mentioned.
- Sister Abigail - Bashed to death six times in the back of the head
- Daniel Coleman - Smothered with a pillow. Revived by doctors with CPR.
- John Coleman - Stabbed five times in the chest with a kitchen knife.
Personality
At first glance, the Colemans see Esther as a quiet, peaceful, kind, and friendly girl with many talents. However, all of this is only a facade, and it is later revealed that Esther is not a child, but instead a full-grown woman who is actually antisocial, cold, pessimistic, and hateful, with extremely dark interests and general lust.
Leena is an evil and manipulative woman who will do anything to satisfy her lust after men, such as murder, threats, attacks on their families, and causing them to suspect their own wives as the perpetrators. Besides her savage side, Leena is extremely talented at playing piano and painting. However, her paintings have a very dark and disturbing element to them under a blacklight. Most of their themes are about her dark and lustful nature, like one of a murderer and another about herself and John having a sexual encounter.
Quotes
“ | I think people should always try to take the bad things that happen to them in their lives, and turn them into something good. Don't you? | „ |
“ | That doesn't matter. They'll send you to jail just for helping me hide her. I had to kill her, because she was going to tell on me. You're not going to tell on me… are you? | „ |
~ Esther tells Max the reason why she had killed sister Abigail. |
“ | If I find out that you're lying, I'll cut your hairless little prick off before you even figure out what it's for. Do you understand me? | „ |
~ Esther/Leena threatens Daniel. |
“ | I thought you would enjoy teaching me. It must be frustrating for someone who loves music as much as you to have a son who isn't interested and a daughter who can't even hear. | „ |
“ | Put it out of its misery. It's in pain and it's your responsibility. | „ |
~ Esther/Leena offers Daniel to kill the pigeon with a rock. |
“ | STOP TALKING TO ME LIKE I'M A CHILD! | „ |
~ Esther/Leena shouts furiously to John. |
“ | Stop crying. Grab a foot, and help me get her off the road. NOW! | „ |
~ Esther/Leena convinces Max to help her finish off Sister Abigail. |
“ | I'll shoot Mommy if you tell! | „ |
~ Esther/Leena's threat to Max. |
“ | It's all right. It must be hard to love an adopted child as much as your own. | „ |
~ Esther/Leena, to John. |
Trivia
- Despite the fact that Orphan received mixed reviews, Esther Coleman was Isabelle Fuhrman's breakout role.
- During filming, Isabelle Fuhrman was around 12 years old, which is opposite to her character being 33.
- Esther is based on a real-life 33-year-old Czech adoption imposter and psychopath named Barbora Skarlova, who passed as a little girl, then years later passed off as a 14-year-old Norwegian boy named Adam since she gained weight and thus looked more like him. While in this visage, she tortured two children in her adoptive family and locked them up in cages before cannibalizing one of them. She was then imprisoned, but got released later on for good behavior. Her whereabouts today are currently unknown.
- Leena's impersonation of the real Esther Albright is inspired by Frédéric Bourdin, a Frenchman who impersonated the missing son of a family. Bourdin himself said he believed the fsmily took him in, in spite of the obvious signs he in no way resembled their son, is because they were responsible for his desth and covered it up.
- Esther likely is a Cluster B Sociopath with borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality traits. It is entirely possible that Esther has both Antisocial Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.
- In the ending credits, you can see a photograph of her when she was in the Saarne Institute, a torn paper about her disorder and her nationality, and a torn photograph of the Sullivan family.
- There are some deleted scenes from Orphan that were excluded from the film:
- On the day when she was adopted by The Colemans, it shows she has dinner with them on the first time. When Daniel and Max start to play with their food, Esther also joins them and later Kate follows them too, and they all playfully laugh.
- After Kate finishes her phone call from Sister Abigail, she then goes to the cashier and meets Joyce in there. Esther later tells her that she has seen John happily talking to her and thinks that he might like her, which makes Kate confused. Esther continues that Joyce wanted John to come over to her house and to please not to tell John because she doesn't want to see him mad at her. From this scene, we can take that Kate feel suspicious at John and Joyce's relationship from Esther.
- At night, Esther is walking alone to throw garbage in the yard. When she throws a garbage, a man looks behind him and sees nothing there. It also shows Esther who is hiding from him behind the garbage.
- Esther is able to use sign language very well, as she uses this to communicate with Max, who is a deaf-mute.
- In the movie, Esther pretends to be Russian while actually being from Estonia. Ironically, her actress is of Russian Jewish descent from her mother's side.