The Stepfather

Why bother coming up with original ideas when you can just remake stuff?

This, unfortunately, is the proverbial thinking in Hollywood, and the reason we're saddled with so many doomed and desperate remakes, reboots, and adaptations of old television shows. Because to much of Hollywood, the masses are only interested in passing recognition. They want us to say "Oh! I remember that old videogame/cartoon/advertising jingle – I'll go see the big budget Hollywood remake!"

One such remake is 'The Stepfather,' a movie from last year that's oh-so-loosely based on a superb little chiller starring the man-soon-to-be-known-as-John-Locke Terry O'Quinn from 1987. As explained on the special features of this disc, the producer had seen 'The Stepfather' on a list of the scariest movies of all time. He had never heard of it. So he watched it, bought the rights, and decided to produce a crappy movie. To think that this is how this stuff really works is sort of beyond belief.

Anyway, this new version of 'The Stepfather,' starts off a lot like the original, with a man (here played by 'nip/tuck's' Dylan Walsh) murdering an entire family and calmly walking out the front door, to start a new life with another family. In the original it was chilling and a punchy start to a movie, here the death tableau that the filmmakers set up seems more set dressed than genuinely disturbing. Anyway, we see him changing his appearance and then are thrust forward several months, to when he meets Sela Ward, a recent divorcee with some domestic troubles. Walsh seems to be the perfect husband – a loving, caring, genuinely good guy. There are some glaring red flags that even a desperate divorcee would probably notice, like how he doesn't have any credit cards and refuses to work a real job. Anyway, Sela Ward's son (Penn Badgley) comes home from military school and becomes skeptical of his soon-to-be-stepfather. From there we get a series of preposterous suspense set pieces that don't thrill as much as gently lull to sleep, culminating in a series of unconvincing murders. It's all been there, done that, with very little freshness or innovation or even basic imagination.

The movie is so dull, plodding, and obvious, in fact, that I started counting the different bikinis worn by Penn Badgley's girlfriend (Amber Heard). I counted four. This is a girl in high school, and not only in high school but supposedly living in the sunshine-y town of Portland, Oregon, and she has four bathing suits? Really? This is not to complain about having Heard walk around in a bikini for three fourths of the movie. In fact, this is one of the highlights. But it's also highlighting one of the more preposterous elements of an already preposterous movie.

Most of the actors seem bored, the direction is slack and tensionless, and the production design and cinematography, while slick, are mostly anonymous. Part of me wants someone to grab Brian De Palma out of whatever hole he's hiding in, hand him the rights to one of these remakes and have him go hog wild. The only way these things work is if someone imbibes them with some kind of freshness or stylistic boldness, which does not happen here.

People forget that the immortal thriller novelist Donald Westlake wrote the script for the original 1987 original, which had a fair amount of class and some interesting character moments. All of that has been jettisoned from the remake.

It should be noted that the version of the film presented here is the 'unrated' version. There is no other option as to how to watch the film, and considering I did not waste my time with this thing in the theater, I have no idea how it differs from its theatrical presentation. I can tell you, pretty assuredly, that this thing is so tame that I'm shocked it even managed to pull down a PG-13.

Next.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

The movie starts automatically and plays some stupid previews for intellectual stimulating material like 'Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.' Oy. The Blu-ray disc is 50GB and Region "A" locked.