I should’ve known, THE STEPFATHER was directed by the same guy who helmed Prom Night remake, now that says a lot. THE STEPFATHER is not only an unnecessary remake but a terrible one. Where the hell is the suspense? It’s a like… a boring hide-and-seek game with no thrill. If I were the stepfather and my good-for-nothing stepson was just lazying around, I’d think about killing him too. How I wish I had a universal remote control when I watched THE STEPFATHER, so I could turn it off at will.
Michael Harding (Penn Badgley) returns home from military school to find his mother (Sela Ward) happily in love and living with her new boyfriend, David (Dylan Walsh). As the two men get to know each other, Michael becomes more and more suspicious of the man who is always there with a helpful hand. Is he really the man of her dreams or could David be hiding a dark side?
David Harris, played by Dylan Walsh, is being delivered to you as this guy who tries his hard to have a good family, but something always screws things up and just like a do-over, he’d kill everyone and go on to a new family to try and make it there. He’s like a hermit crab, can’t seem to fit in just one house for too long, once he overstays his visit, he goes to the next one but somehow he can’t just leave his old family breathing. Timid at first but eventually his over-controlling psycho personality can’t hide its face anymore.
Dylan Walsh to me is a talented actor, if you’ve seen his work in Nip/Tuck, you’d notice that he incorporates some of that Sean McNamara anger and frustration into his character David Harris. I don’t think it’s fair to compare him with Terry O’Quinn, star of the original version but Walsh is just a victim of a movie with poor writing and directing
Those who are attracted to this movie just to watch the sexy Amber Heard won’t get disappointed. It’s PG-13 so she doesn’t reveal her The Informers glorious body but she’s always in Bikini. THE STEPFATHER is truckload of cliches, just like any other movie like it, Heard plays the character who’s in denial… always forcefully tries to make sense out of things that don’t. So after a while, that bikini tease and her rambling get irritating. She becomes one of those people who contributes nothing to society.
I think what’s very disappointing about THE STEPFATHER is after all that cat and mouse game under one roof, all that suspicion that Michael, played by Penn Badgley, has on his new dad, and David’s constant efforts to cover his tracks and walk one step ahead of Michael, after all that and more, sadly the final confrontation isn’t well executed. All of a sudden the movie makes David seem like he has a neck of steel and the fight comes and goes abruptly, not to mention the whole act was poorly choreographed. At one point, the father and son look like they’re doing a swordfight and you can barely see anything to find out if this movie has any shred of intensity at all. But it falls short, way short.
* Place the cursor on the image below to check my grade for this film
I think this movie was really good. Yes, there could have been more scary parts, but it was still scary. I think the acting was good and so was the production. The ending needed some work but it wasn’t so bad it ruined the movie. I would recomend this movie.
yeah, but I wanted to see that scene in the trailer where his foot was on the cable of the electric saw that was hanging over Amber Heard’s face… but they went with a different, milder sequence instead in the theatrical cut.
Dylan Walsh did have the ability to play a psycho, so I give him props for that.