Released for a sneak-preview run on August 14, just one week before Thailand's ratings system was put into effect, the Hollywood horror thriller Orphan has been chopped by censors.

"There are two glaringly obvious censorship cuts in this film as shown here in Chiang Mai, clear for all to see – one having to do with sex, one having to do with violence," writes Thomas Olsen, an avid movie-goer who updates cinema-showtime blogs for Chiang Mai and Pattaya and sends out e-mail newsletters on Chiang Mai's movie offerings. "They are just crude chops in the film, no question of pixillation or the like. You can’t miss them."

Otherwise, Thomas says he enjoyed the movie, which is about a 9-year-old girl orphan (Isabelle Fuhrman) who appears angelic until she settles in with her new parents (Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard).

Released by Warner Bros., movie opened for nightly sneak previews in most multiplexes last Friday and opens in a wider release this week alongside the first two movies to come under Thailand's new ratings system, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and the Thai horror Buppah Rahtree 3.2: Rahtree's Revenge by Yuthlert Sippapak. Both are rated 18+, suggested for viewers aged 18 and older.

Had Orphan come under the rating system, it might have been an 18+ as well. In the U.S., it was rated R, restricted to viewers 17 and older because of "disturbing violent content, some sexuality, and language."

The censorship of Orphan "is apropos of Thailand’s new film ratings system, which started in a slow stuttering way on August 11, and throws into relief the whole question of film censorship in Thailand," says Thomas.

"It has ever been thus in my time in Thailand. There has been one current of censorship that has gone the pixilation, fuzz or blob route, and at the same time an independent cutting current that, with authority to do so or not, just simply cuts a scene or a part of a scene that someone somewhere finds objectionable," Thomas writes, describing the various ways films have been censored in Thailand.

He doesn't think the ratings system will change much.

"I have a feeling that these kinds of cuts will continue, no matter what film rating system may be enacted," he writes.

Indeed, the ratings system still has a provision to ban or cut films if they are deemed harmful to national security or the Kingdom's institutions. Filmmakers have protested the inclusion of that provision, saying it runs counter to the idea of having ratings that put the choice in the hands of audience, and is unconstitutional as media is supposed to be guaranteed freedom, but film is left out of that, or, if you will, orphaned.