In the story, Esther is a young native girl from eastern countries, Russia specifically. Her past is very cloudy and nothing is known about her parents or the rest of her family. In the story, she is an orphan and lives in an orphanage for girls, where she is rather a solitary and reserved character, but very polite, helpful, and from the words of the nuns, exemplary behavior. But one day, she is adopted by a couple, Kate and John Coleman, emerging from a hard test after lost their newborn child, died at birth. John and Kate also have two other children, Danny and Maxine. Esther settled well in her new adopted family, but soon, the behavior of Esther becomes increasingly strange and sometimes really morbid. And throughout the story, Kate, who increasingly has suspicion, will dig in her research and discover with horror who really is the girl named Esther.
Esther is the proof of two things: one, "you should never trust appearances," and two, "the devil is seductive. A demon behind a face of an angel."
Indeed, with her innocent face and character of perfect little girl, no one would ever suspect Esther Coleman to committing murders and other atrocities. Yet behind this innocent child's face lurks a monster, sneaky, manipulative, lurking in the shadows, and with a passion for making people suffer. Esther is very smart and uses her cunning to mount people against each other and pose suspicion on someone else. She is also very skillful with a gun or knife, which shows that kill has become a routine for her. Esther can be very quiet, but when alone, she may start to have uncontrollable tantrums, leading her to scream, destroy everything around her, which also shows great mental insanity. Esther always wears bracelets and a choker, for her style, but for real is to hide the marks of laceration she had when she was locked up in a mental asylum and constantly kept in straitjacket because she was too dangerous and aggressive.
But before kill people, Esther seems to like to break them psychologically. She enjoys manipulating Maxine and make from her her accomplice to murder, and threatening her to kill her family if she denounces. In one scene or Esther set fire to the hut of Danny, trying to kill him because he has become an inconvenient witness, she seems to enjoy and smiles to see Danny crying and panic while around him the flames devour the wood and approach. Worse, when Danny is in hospital in a coma, Esther expects him to be alone in the recovery room, and trying to strangle him under a pillow and kill him to prevent him to wake up.
What I most admire in the character of Esther is her killing spree that she perfectly hides to the eyes of all, when she wants. In an alternative end of the film, Esther manages to escape, despite her wounds in the face. When the police arrived at the scene of the murder she has just committed, Esther manages to make herself pass as a poor innocent victim and is taken away by the police for being helped. In a way, in the alternate end, Esther wins.
Even if she appears in only one film, Esther, with her madness, her cunning, her sadistic attitude, her angelic face hiding a true demonic and unscrupulous killer, Esther deserves her place among the most charismatic villains.
See you next month humans \m/
Mathias, the Killmaster
Fire and Blood \m/
