The Stepfather/(newly released DVD)

The Stepfather

"Notable Actors"

1. No One special
2. Whats his face
3. that girl from that thing

Genre

• thriller
• horror

Director

Nelson McCormick (Prom Night)

The Stepfather(2oo9). Meet David. David is our antagonist. He's the guy at the grocery store that seems so friendly making idle chat with your mother about the weather. He appears to be a man that has been hurt bad when he tells you all about his daughter and wife being killed by a drunk driver. He's the man that gets engaged to your mom soon after and says he has big aspirations for the family. Yea he's a real family man.
Meet Michael. Michael is our hero. He is a 17 year old returning home from military school for the summer. He's the typical bad boy thats been reformed. He's not thrilled about his mom remarrying but isn't happy with own father either so for now he can deal with Daivd who seems like a nice guy. He's not suspicious of David right off the back but very quickly he learns that theres more than meets the eye.
From the trailers alone one could easily compare this 'family fun' flick to Disturbia (Shia LaBeouf) and/or Domestic Disturbance (John Travolta). I was hoping things werent as similiar as they seemed but they were so if you've seen either of the two then essentially you have seen The Stepfather already. The funny thing is that The Stepfather came before both, (its a remake of The Stepfather1987)
 But the aforementioned earlier films are much more original and enjoyable than the movie I am reviewing today and I would highly recomend either in exchange for this pale comparison of a thriller.
Upon Michaels arrivial from Military school he is content with having David around. He feeds Michael the drunk driver story, helps hims rejoin his school swim team which he loves and is keeping his mother happy. But within days Michael starts sensing something isn't right with this man. A neighbor sees a sketch on Americas Most Wanted that resembles his  fututre step dad, and after jokingly telling Michaels mom she is killed in an "accident" a day later. Somehow step dad knows the details before anyone else does. The weird activity doesn't stop there.  Daddy  keeps giving Micheal strange threatening stares, he's grabbed his brother innapropriately a few times and he even forgets the name of his deseased family members and his own!
This is no mystery to us. From the very beginning we are forced to look at a man (David) with a long beard and glasses start his morning. He shaves, has breafast and casually pulls out the drive way as we are greeted with a disturbing image of a mother and her three kids lifeless bodies are scattered all over the house. We know that step pa is indeed a killer. The detectives bring us up to speed and give us the 4-1-1 on the guy. To me its a disclaimer. There telling you upfront how freaking the stupid the concept is and I guess the rest is on us on whether or not to finish the flick or pop in a different dvd. Unfortunately I chose the latter. We learn that not only that is David a killer he is only interested in killing divorcees and/or widows along their kids. At the start of the movie we learn that this is his third family. Ok, This is the meat of the film. And its absolute foolishness. I mean come the hell on! that's just stupid. Your telling me this guy goes from place to place preying on single women long enough to earn the title stepdad so he can eventually kill the family? Why would anybody do that? And why is it after so many times that he's done it he still hasn't gotten his story straight? What a sloppy conman/killer.
The madness doens't stop there. Father has been able to go from family to family undetected for several years becasuse of completely legitamite reasons that would totally work in the real world. (sarcasm detected?) He has a fool-proof disquise shaving off his long beard, dyeing his black hair to a lighter dark dark dark brown and choosing to put in contacts instead of glasses. (Amazing!) He's also managed to never have his picture taken by anyone and promptly deletes secret photos taken without his consent. David knows better than to leave a paper trail behind so he strictly pays cash for everything and chooses to work like an undocumented immigrant, only jobs that pay him under the table!
It's a completely improbable scenario. Almost ridiculously so. The terror still doesn't end there, the movie was completely predicatable. I probably could have written this review had I not watched it anyway, but I would have guessed that it would have made a little more sense than it did. The death scenes were unoriginal and everyone that died was so stupid for putting themselves in such vulnerable positions that I think they got what they deserved. Michael was the only character that I liked in the film. His character was the only believeable one, he grew in obsession along with suspsicion for his step dad. He was your typical teenage boy, surrounded by a ton of adult idiots. He had a sexy girlfriend who wouldn't even entertain his thoughts on stepdad  and rolled her eyes at him more than anything.(dumb broad) She was clearly a show piece for the film. Her wardrobe consisted of different colored itty bitty bikins and a bra and panties, thats it. Throughout the whole 98 minutes we got to see her rock hard abs and nice body. I'm guessing she was the apology from the director for giving us such a shitty movie and she helped alittle, I suppose.
The Stepfather was a failure, not a total failure but it was, okay a total failure. The movie did have one almost redeeming moment though. The anti-climatic ending was still severly bad but the only unpredictable part of The Stepfather. First we have the usual scene where everyone that doubted Michael all realize that his suspicions were right and David actually is a killer. Michael actually finds a dead body in a locked wooden storage container in the basement (this man had the nerve to hide dead bodies in the house?) So mom, Michael and hot girlfriend are all running from David and mom stabs him with  broken glass in his neck. He recovers, (ofcourse). Somehow him and David end up on the roof for the ultimate dual. Its what we were all waiting for. Astoningishly not only does David fall off the roof like we knew he would, he takes our hero with him! They plummet to the ground.
Fastforward. One month later Michael wakes up in a hosptital bed from a coma! Mom and sexy girlfriend are there cause they just knew he would wake up one day and god forbid he wake up alone. Then they lay the bomb on us. Although Michael was injured bad enough to fall into a coma, our relentless  stepfather somehow safely got away before the police made it. As the ending credits role in David preys on another single mom with two boys, anxious to yet again be called stepfather. But maybe after all that David has been he might just opt for a  regular divorce this time.
Movie grade
F+
Worth Watching?
Hells no