Film File - The Stepfather

Your new daddy's home...and he's not in good form. Not good at all. When troubled teen Michael (Penn Badgley) returns home after a year at military school, he finds his mother, Susan (Sela Ward), in love and his soon-to-be stepfather, David Harris (Dylan Walsh), has moved into their home. David says he wants them to become the perfect family. However, as they get to know each other, Michael quickly becomes convinced the new man in his mother's life is far from perfect. Trying to verify what he knows of Harris's past, Michael finds things that don't add up. As strange events and Harris's bursts of malevolence become more frequent, naturally nobody listens to Michael when he tells his mother and girlfriend of his suspicions, they think he's being paranoid. Slowly, as Michael digs deeper for proof that his suspicions are well-founded, cracks begin to show in his potential stepfather's perfect façade...and some of his secrets come seeping out. As a man with a history of trying to create the perfect family, Harris has taken extreme measures when things haven't worked out by cleaning the slate in an horrific way. As the monster inside begins to take over, only David stands in the way of a total family wipeout. Billed as "an edge of the seat popcorn thriller", this movie is adapted from an original 1987 film based on a true-life tale of a man who decided he had to murder his family and subsequently went on a rampage, killing his wife, three teenage kids and his mother, before moving to Colorado, assuming a new life, re-marrying and changing his name. The crime wasn't discovered until 18 years later that he was, in fact, the same man. In this updated edition, the filmmakers imagined an individual who has an obsessive need to be at the head of a family with a distinct set of domineering 1950s values in the current day. Picking vulnerable women, either widowed or divorced with kids, he takes over by first being the perfect father until slowly unravelling when his dream of perfection doesn't measure up. Measured against the 1987 film, this one has little of the high tension so well racheted up by director Joseph Reuben and tightly scripted by the recently departed Donald E Westlake. The 1987 film featured a sterling performance from Terry O'Quinn as the unhinged stepfather. While current director Nelson McCormick does a reasonable job, the script by JS Cardone has none of the implied violence of the original - nor does Dylan Walsh bring any real menace to the feature. Taken on its own merits, this 2009 version does manage a few decent shock jolts without too much need for blood - always a welcome change - and will work well as a run-of-the-mill piece of entertainment for a Saturday night. Most of the plot is pretty predictable, save for a few surprises toward the end. Chances are, we haven't seen the last of this bad daddy, however, as the final moments leave the door wide open for a 'Stepfather 2' sometime in the future.