Film Review: The Stepfather
Stepfather (2009)
Dir: Nelson McCormick
Review by: Dustin Hall
The Stepfather has no balls.
More? Oh, okay.
First off, it’s worth saying that this movie is not as good as the original. Not even close. And the original was good, but not fantastic: 22 years later and dated – the suspense, the characters – it all outshines this new, banal remake. Basically, the setting has been updated, the main character changed from female to male to increase the father/son alpha-male tension, but otherwise it’s the same film. So what’s missing this go-around? A list of observations:
For a film that’s supposed to be a modern update on an oldie, it sure feels behind the times somehow. The OC camera work, the cheesy one-liner dialogue – it all feels so 90′s. I guess that matches the score, all music pulled from 1994 top-hits albums. Hell, even the sets are pulled from my High School career. Check the plastic, door-hanging CD collection in the Main Kid’s room. Do college kids still collect CD’s? What upper-middle class suburban kid doesn’t have an iPod by now? In fact, I’d guess the movie was set 15 years ago, were it not for the prominence of Real Dad’s iPhone.
The movie cheats. Gotta hate when horror movies do this. The tension is a slow, slow crawl to the eventual, inevitable, heated (2 of 101 minutes) chase sequence. So, to up the ante a little during the show, it uses jump scares; literally, the old cat-jumping-out-of-the-shadows routine. Beyond that is the stepfather’s ability to ignore continuity direction, and materialize from thin air. There will be a scene where a victim kneels down to look at something, stands, and BAM! Step-Dad is behind them. Except, we just got a shot full on behind the victim, and Step-Dad wasn’t there. Not like he even just stepped into the shot either, he just miraculously appeared there. Also, during the trailer’s rooftop battle scene, Main Kid looks over the ledge of the house and BAM! Step-Dad reaches up at him, climbing up from the depths. Except, the previous shot was of the entire ledge, and Step-Dad was definitely not there clinging to anything, and there’s no way he could have been beneath the ledge. The power of flight is a sloppy third-act addition to the story.
Product placement is everywhere. Chances are, the film was made to bomb. Who cares? The advertising bucks are already secured. Step-Dad likes Jif peanut butter. Watch him slowly and deliberately eat Jif during the opening credits. Oh, he just moved into town, where’s the Jif? Honey, are we out of Jif? Lets play GTA 4 at least 3 times during the movie. Lets look up Dad’s criminal record on this Apple computer. Hey, Dad just dropped his iPhone. Let’s have another look at that iPhone. Here’s a big plot point revolving around Step-Dad not being cool enough to know how to work an iPhone. He’s so pissed at that iPhone, he needs to cool off with some Jif.
The biggest crime of Stepfather is its complete lack of willingness to cause anything that might resemble distress in its audience. You know, that suspense and terror thing? Yeah, it’s not in there. Most of the film is spent with the college kids making out in the pool, questioning why Step-Dad is so cool and real Dad is such a douche, and ‘can this be real?’ Opening sequence: cops come out of a deserted house, they carry evidence bags full of bloody knives, ‘There’s blood everywhere’, and the victim’s relatives are dismayed over how massacred the family is. Cut to a shot of Step-Dad walking around, looking at the bodies while enjoying Jif on toast. Wait… there’s no blood here. In fact, there’s almost no sign of violence at all. All the kids could just be asleep. Even mom is just tossed over the couch… where did this bloody knife come from? Were the cops just stabbing the bodies at the scene of the crime for the hell of it?
In fact, any time it looks like the kids might be in peril, they are quickly removed from the movie, which kind of defeats the idea of Dad being an evil outsider. It also works against a coherent story. Uh oh, nosy sister has uncovered that Step-Dad is an imposter. Well, better drive over in a torrential rainstorm to attack her (an idea that hinges on sis being the only person on the planet who, late for a flight and in the middle of a lightning storm, will stop to fish a downed patio umbrella from the pool), and then try to axe the rest of the family because you don’t want the villain to be positively identified. Except, you removed the kids from the story already by having them leave for a sleepover. You can’t really kill a family that’s never there. Hell, I forgot Step-Dad’s new family even had a girl in it – her only role is to walk through the house between her room and wherever she’s spending the night about five times. Not like Girlfriend fares any better: she’s got loads of lines, but is only clothed in two scenes in the film – the opening and ending. Otherwise, her purpose is to lay on her bed in panties, or by the pool in one of a half-dozen different swim suits demonstrating her Kristen Stewart School of Acting degree.
And hey, you know that cool scene in the trailer where Step-Dad swings a table saw over Girlfriend’s face and it’s all intense? Yeah, it’s not in the movie. I mean, there’s a table saw, and it falls from above the girl, harmlessly next to her, but all the suspense that was advertized is shamefully absent: excised, no doubt, for the eventual Unrated Blu-ray.
No surprises. No suspense. This might as well be PG, if you cut ‘the bird’ out of the film. Stepfather is the limpest dick of a horror film I’ve seen in ages.
This film gets an extra half star for only one reason: Sela Ward, MILF.
Brutal as Hell rating: 1.5 of 5
