The Stepfather (2009)

I hate to start a review with an admission of guilt, but I have to admit that I agreed to see a bargain showing of THE STEPFATHER to placate my bored daughter without any expectations that the film would be decent. So I didn't exactly have an open mind. Sadly, the film did NOTHING to change the mind I had almost made up in advance.

The 1987 original was, in its day, a creepy success. Terry O'Quinn (John Locke on LOST) was a calm, cool & collected psycho killer whose friendly demeanor could shut off in split second and become icy deadness. The basic story is similar in the two movies. The stepfather ingratiates himself into a family where the mother is feeling alone and in need of male companionship, and thus, may overlook a few strange moments in her new beau. There are kids already in place, and their new stepfather works hard to win them over...but they pick up on the fact that a lot of it is fake emotion. When the kids inevitably "disappoint" their new dad, bloody hell takes over and the family is killed, and "dad" moves on to another family.

In the original, the stepfather actually was always juggling two families. He already knew that one would inevitably disappoint him and he'd need another household to move to. When you think about it, this IS pretty creepy...he knows it's just a matter of time before he has to kill everyone, so why not have another family readily at hand. In the remake, the stepfather (Dylan Walsh, from NIP/TUCK) just goes from one to another...as though he thinks each family will be THE ONE.

The story is pretty predictable and familiar (and I bet if I looked back at 1987's film again, it would seem pretty tame...although I doubt the power of O'Quinn's performance will have diminished). New guy moves in and little details about him just don't seem right. Kids grow suspicious, but the newly married mother is oblivious or in denial. As the puzzle comes together, dad becomes more unhinged and all this leads to a final, bloody confrontation. A story as neatly laid out as this requires credible acting and a good pace and good editing sense to have a chance of giving us the creeps we need to feel. The new STEPFATHER doesn't measure up at all.

Walsh is an acceptable choice as the lead character. In NIP/TUCK, Walsh's character Sean is always the guy who on the surface seems like the nice, understanding, decent counterpart to his hedonistic partner, but often behaves just as stupidly. You could argue that he hasn't strayed all that far afield in THE STEPFATHER, but the role of the nice guy with a dark heart fits him. He doesn't do anything spectacular with the role, but he is acceptable. Sela Ward, always a solid if unspectacular actress, plays his new wife...and she's solid but unspectacular. Her dialogue, when she's defending her new man, is hardly of help to her. It's of the "Why can't everyone just be happy for me?" ilk.

So, two crucial characters are in place, and they are okay, particularly for an unambitious, low-budget genre film. But then we've got Penn Badgley and Amber Heard (PINEAPPLE EXPRESS) as the "kids." Each actor is about 23, but supposedly of high school age. Neither looks remotely that young. Badgley is the troubled son who has just come back for the summer from military school. He's sullen and vaguely unhappy, but never convinces as a kid that was bad enough to be sent away. He's mostly petulant, and, frankly, a bad actor. Heard is his long-time girlfriend, and it is apparently her lifelong ambition to strut around in front of her marginally interested boyfriend in a skimpy bikini. I felt somewhat bad for her...she's supposed to be the "rock" that keeps her boyfriend steady and grounded, and she's constantly giving him advice...but it's always in her bikini. Heard is not up to the task, so she comes across as an airhead who is reading lines. And the bikini seems even more out of place, because even though the two are ALWAYS hanging around the backyard pool, the film is lit in such a way that it always feel vaguely overcast and cold outside...I was always thinking she would be covered in goosebumps. It's these two characters who are supposed to finally put two-and-two together about the new man in their lives...but they seem so bland and vacuous that I never believed a single thing either of them said or did on screen. And if you dislike these characters, it's really tough to give a darn about what happens to them.

Also, the movie is PG-13, and this doesn't help. Walsh commits several violent acts, but we always cut away tastefully before we see much of anything, and while I don't need to wallow in gratuitous violence, not seeing ANYTHING really happen never really allows us to fear this guy. For goodness sake, he kills a little old lady from across the street, and we don't feel a thing.

There are occasional amusing elements, such as watching Walsh come up with excuses not to provide a social security number to his new employer...but when the climactic confrontations come, they are bland and unexciting. The movie spends a lot of time leading up to the final you-know-what hitting the fan, but when it does, all we can do is shrug "so what."

There was no really good reason to remake THE STEPFATHER. But having decided to, the filmmakers put very little effort into it. It's as though they decided that marketing should do all the work for them...they didn't actually need to make a good film. And they at least succeeded in that.

THE STEPFATHER

STARRING: Dylan Walsh, Penn Badgley, Amber Heard, Sela Ward, Sherry Stringfield, Jon Tenney, Paige Turco and Jessalyn Gilsig

WRITTEN BY: J.S. Cardone, Donald E. Westlake, Carolyn Lefcourt and Brian Garfield

DIRECTED BY: Nelson McCormick

Rated: PG - 13
Genre: Horror / Thriller
Release Date: 16 October 2009

I'll admit that as a fan of the original 1987 version of The Stepfather, I was slightly concerned for the remake when I learned that Dylan Walsh was playing the evil daddy. I'm a huge fan of the show Nip/Tuck on which he plays a real softy. He is such a likeable and sweet guy on the show that I had serious doubts if he would be able to pull of such a nasty role as this. Well just as Heath Ledger surprised all of us in The Dark Knight, Walsh did the same for me here.

His portrayal of David Harris is one of the best performances I have seen from anyone this year. I think what worked so well for me was that he is not at all a creepy looking guy. He is very charming and kind-spirited, so when he gets into this particular character who is a very sinister individual, it really bothers you. How could a guy like this have such a Norman Bates like quality to him?

I think my favorite portion of the film was the first five minutes. You have no idea what the hell is going on. You just see this guy shaving in the mirror and staring at himself oddly. Then he dies his hair. You know something is up but you don't know what exactly. Then he gets dressed and goes downstairs and helps himself to some peanut buttered-toast and coffee. As far as he is concerned, everything is fine. But we know better; the director makes sure of it.

Then out of nowhere we see a child sprawled over the kitchen table; dead, in the middle of breakfast. We know that he is aware of the dead body and yet he continues to act as if nothing is the matter. Now we are creped out. Next he walks around the house preparing to leave and we see other dead bodies. He steps around them as if they were a child's toy or a sleeping dog in his path and it really gets under your skin; especially the way he looks at them, no doubt envisioning how he killed them earlier. It's not very gory, but it's unsettling. Then he turns up the AC and leaves.

I generally despise PG - 13 horror films. They are typically watered down and aimed at junior high school kids with an early bed time. They are very frustrating and disappointing. This is the best one I have seen in years; right up there with The Ring and The Grudge.

I'm not saying it's better than the original, but it's just as good. It's as different from the earlier version as Scream is from Psycho. You get more gore in the first film for sure but you get more wit and suspense out of this one. I'm glad that both films exist.

We learn that David has a history of doing this. The authorities are onto him but don't know exactly who he is. He moves away to a small town in Oregon, changes his identity completely, and looks for a new potential family.

He is very much into having a family, despite the fact that something clearly didn't work out so well with the last one he had.

He meets Susan Harding (Sela Ward) and her small children, casually in a grocery store and the two of them hit it off right away. We flash forward to sometime in the future and learn that they are to be married, are now living together and that Susan has an older son who's about to come back into the picture. He was sent away to a Military reform school for his poor behavior.

Penn Badgley plays Susan's son Michael. Michael is suspicious of David from the get-go and I suspect David gathered this and made a quick effort to win Michael over. At their first meeting he takes Michael downstairs and offers him a drink of liquor from his secret stash and asks him not to tell his mother. David's liquor cabinet in the basement is only one of his many locked compartments which we soon learn the contents of.

Everything is all hunky-dory for a while and then people outside of the family begin to grow suspicious of David; like the old lady across the street that recognizes him from the news and then winds up dead.

Soon enough David's charm starts to wear off and Michael is no longer too fond of him. He seems to be the only one noticing all of the eerie things going on with David. He begins to become infatuated with learning who David is and where he comes from, as things that David has told him about his past, start to not add up.

One of the things that really creeped me out was how David was so interested in what Michael and his girlfriend Kelly (Amber Heard) are doing when no one is around. David is fine with sharing some alcohol with Michael but the thought of his new step-son having sexual relations under hiss roof seems to really get to David.

There is a very well acted scene between David and Kelly alone in the kitchen while Michael is out in the pool. Now Kelly too starts to see that there may be something off with David. I wish that they would have gone a little further with it, but it was still nice.

Eventually David starts to catch on that Michael may be onto him and things start to really heat up. Like I said, the film isn't that gory with its PG - 13 rating; but it's a lot like a Hitchcock film where suspense rather than blood pumps through its veins. And David does some very sick and shocking things.

The climax was very entertaining and Walsh's performance near the end only became more astonishing. He's a much underrated actor and is in definite justification to receive more lead roles of this stature.

Perhaps what kept the film from being better were the other characters and the actors that played them. The actors weren't bad but they weren't great either. David's character was so well developed; I felt that the other people in the story could have used some attention as well.

'The Stepfather' plot is quite predictable, though interesting enough to keep one's attention throughout the movie. It opens with the 'bad guy' getting dressed, then eating breakfast and stepping over the bodies of his recently murdered family. Then it's off to a new town and a new life. He meets a divorcee, moves in with her, and dodges any activities that might identify him. His stepson, however, is suspicious, as well as his fiance's sister and the former husband. Meanwhile, a neighbor sees a TV show featuring his prior crimes and becomes suspicious as well. Eventually their concerns bring confrontations, and the deaths of the former husband, neighbor, and fiance's sister. Finally the stepson finds his father's body in the basement freezer, and the bloody conclusion is on. The really bad news is that, though wounded, he escapes to repeat the horror again.