There’s something unusual about Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), or so the ad campaign for Orphan more or less says. She’s a charming young girl with a faint Slavic accent and a hypnotizing stare. Other kids don’t seem to get along with her, but that may be due to her apparent maturity; she speaks with a clarity and depth that outstrips most adults. She’s also a gifted painter and pianist, and likes to dress herself in frilly princess dresses. What aspiring parents wouldn’t want to adopt her?

Those are the traits that see Esther adopted by Kate and John Coleman (Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard), a wealthy Connecticut couple who already have two children of their own. Not too long ago their third child, Jessica, died in the womb. Kate and John figure it only right they give the love they had for Jessica to another deserving girl.

This much you know, and further, you know that there is indeed something quite wrong with Esther. She has fits of screaming and a devious streak that manifests early. And brother, don’t you dare try to touch the ribbons she has tied around her neck and wrists. She is also apparently quite the psychologist, able to suss out the fault lines in a family dynamic (Kate’s a recovering alcoholic, John had an affair 10 years ago) in no time at all. It isn’t long before Esther’s maneuverings turn fully sinister.

Horror fans familiar with the “evil child” thread of movies can already start to guess where Orphan is going with its premise. There are two possible explanations, laid out in such movies as The Omen and The Bad Seed, for who—or what—Esther is: supernatural, or sociopathic. This either-or question is the only mystery at work in Orphan, and is consequently the only thing that raises even a modicum of tension. Pity the reveal comes so close to the end, and everything up till that point could point in any number of directions. That is not a proper mystery. That’s just the filmmakers seeing how long they can hold out on you.

You might expect a little more from the film, and not without good reason. Farmiga and Sarsgaard are both gifted actors and for approximately 45 minutes of the film’s 123-minute running time, they and director Jaume Collet-Serra seem to be playing Orphan’s shop-worn premise pretty straight. I started to wonder—in the optimistic part of my mind that never seems to learn its lesson—if Orphan might not genuinely surprise me.

But at some point past that 45-minute mark, Orphan jumps the track from moderately serious thriller to something more like a slasher schlockfest, and the movie’s distribution via Dark Castle Entertainment—set up to revamp and make movies along the lines of horror huckster William Castle—makes a lot more sense. The writing, too, seems to get a little shakier. Esther had some power as a creepy little moppet early on, but when her evilness is unveiled, her dialogue gets silly. When Kate says “We need to talk” and Esther shoots back with “We’re past that point, don’t you think?” Well, come on now, seriously.

Collet-Serra isn’t playing fair, either. There are about six moments designed precisely to build tension for the sake of it. Kate opens the fridge door, partially obstructing the frame (though not Kate’s vision, not that such things matter in horror movies), the music swells, builds… and she shuts the door and no one’s there, and we move on. There’s no reason to feel any tension or fear in that moment, and in the context of story a “scare” placed in those moments makes no sense. It’s like a late-stage Pavlovian experiment: all bell, no meat. The brazen manipulation is jarring and a little smug.

Which is to say that Orphan never is (nor attempts to be) scary. It is creepy, in a juvenile way; if I was 15 the reveal of young Esther’s artistry might have been chilling and/or cool. Fuhrman, bless her heart, is so damn good in her role as a cute little murderer (and other things besides) that the role damn near borders on child abuse. But that’s it. It’s disappointing when a filmmaker steps into a well-worn niche genre and aspires to nothing more than the expected. It’s even more disappointing when that filmmaker ropes a fine cast into it. Why bother?