Hollywood has been stirred into commotion by a seemingly clear correlation between the July 24 release of The Orphan and significant drop in worldwide adoption rates.  “It’s incredible,” remarked Jaume Collet-Serra, the film’s director.  “So often in this business, we just churn out the same genre-governed and predictable fluff leaves an audience unimpressed and untouched.  Yet we still aspire to creating high art, and this film is clear proof of the power movies can have over an audience.”

The film, which tells the horrifying tale of an honest protestant family adopting a Slavic child who immediately goes on a deadly rampage through the small town community, began inauspiciously enough.  “[Writer Alex Mace] and I were just jawing one day about our elementary school days and we got on the subject of the adopted kids in our classes,” recalls co-writer David Johnson.  “They were always so…weird, you know?  A lot of them were from some stupid far off country, and they always got testy when you talked about how much you loved your natural parents or what it was like growing up as a kid in a loving home, you know?”  And that, Johnson states, is how Esther—the psychotic eastern European orphan who speaks with a British accent as she attempts to maim her mother and new siblings in the hopes of seducing her new father—was born.  “It just made sense,” Johnson said.  “Obviously, she was going to be jealous of her pure-blooded siblings, and with her upbringing in the savagery of Eastern Europe, she would have no qualms about using violence to carry out her evil orphan agenda.”

Yet the dip in adoptions has surpassed even the filmmakers’ wildest dreams, as rates have fallen by as much as forty percent for Slavic females, who instead will continue to live in the rigid “orphanage Gulag” system inherited from the Soviet Union until they are old enough to take a place in the global sex trade.  Least effected were Asian children, who seem to pose less of a threat to perspective parents.  “Frankly, the benefits of adopting an Asian child—especially a girl—continue to outweigh the risks,” said Michael McHugh, executive vice president of the National Adoption Study Association, commonly referred to as “the other NASA.”  “It just seems that the potential benefits far outweigh the risks.  Sure, she may bring bird flu or a communist agenda into your home, but she also just might win a spelling bee or use her cleft lip to play a virtuoso clarinet performance at Carnegie Hall.  Right now, people still seem willing to roll the dice on that one.”

But both liberal filmmakers and vicious antiquated anti-adoption isolationist assholes agree that it’s too soon to tell whether Hollywood has the power to continue to shape the way we think about social issues.  Luckily, there should be plenty of data in the near future to consider.  “It’s no coincidence that a few months after we dropped The Orphan, we’re set to release The Stepfather,” MGM Studio president John Goldwyn said, referring to an upcoming horror flick which features a charming but murderous stepfather determined to kill his new children.  “And we’ll see what happens.  We’re not sure if it’s possible for maladjusted children of broken homes to hate these second fathers–who vie for their mother’s attention and give the worst birthday and Christmas gifts ever–any more than they already do.  But if we see a sharp increase in use of the phrase ‘you’re not my real dad,’ or more frequent use of first names dripping in sarcasm and hate, then it’s safe to say we have something here.  Only time will tell.”