Movie Review: The Stepfather

In this updated version of the 1987 film, Dylan Walsh (Nip/Tuck) plays a killer who frequently marries single mothers for the pursuit, and overly obsessive concept, of the perfect family. So, much so that when the families disappoint he punishes them by killing them all. Unfortunately, the film is not as intriguing as the previous statement and don’t worry about spoilers here; this part is not a mystery as shown in the opening sequence when Walsh’s character peacefully eats breakfast after murdering a woman and her 2 children. Later, Walsh meets Sela Ward, a recently divorced mother of three. She is easily swept away by Walsh’s charm as so are the two younger children. However, Ward’s delinquent teenage son (Penn Badgley) is not as naive and along with the help of his brain dead girlfriend (Amber Heard) searches to uncover the truth about the new stepfather.

The problem with this film is that the narrative asks you to follow around two teenagers in the search of a mystery that has already been given away to the audience, and so the mystery doesn’t exist. There are countless scenes between Badgley and Heard as they debate the validity of the stepfather’s story, and yet the only purpose they seem to serve to the film is another excuse to display Heard in her underwear or a bikini. Though that seems very lucrative, it gets tiring to an adult watching PG-13 film. In any, “Who did it,” murder mystery where the identity of the killer is revealed early on, the best thing a narrative can do is allow the characters to discover the identity of the killer and divert the story into an idea of how to get rid of the killer. Or in the Shadow of Doubt sense, ask a moral question like, “What does an ordinary person do when faced with extraordinary evil?” Films like Manhunter and Silence of Lambs do reveal the identity of the killers early on. However, those films are more about how to catch a killer, and less about who is the killer.

If you’ve seen Disturbia (a horrible remake of Rear Window), also a film about teenage delinquents set inside the claustrophobic environment of a suburban neighborhood, then you have basically seen this film as well. The style and texture of this film are the same, and almost as dull.

This film barley sustains any suspense at all, and instead flutters into boredom. The best part or the film is near the end, when the stepfather really starts to digress into a killing frenzy (again no spoilers here, just view the trailer). But by then it is too little too late. There is certainly not enough mystery, suspense, or casualties in this film to sustain 101 minutes. The Friday the 13th franchise survives solely off of the body count and never on the story, either having a story or a lot of killing, at best have both, but to have neither is dreary. Though, the audience viewing this film did scream, shout, and jump in their seats at parts of the film they still compelled to tell the representatives hosting the free screening that the film was, “Horrible,” and, “Sucked.” I suggest that next time the filmmakers look toward Hitchcock’s Shadow of Doubt, Rope, and Rear Window for homework on creating entertaining and suspenseful films about monsters that live in the everyday world among us.

Grade: D+