A Filmmaker's Review: "The Stepfather" (2009)

This is the worst rating I have given a movie so far and I'm gonna tell you why. When I think a film is absolutely terrible I normally watch it one more time at a different time and place in order to see whether it was me thinking it was awful or maybe I was just not in the mood for that movie. Well, I watched this three times just to make sure and no, it's just a god awful movie. Here's a bit of the history of me and this movie...

I remember when it came out in the cinemas and on DVD because I had known some people who had seen it and said it was thoroughly average at best. Now, yes, this could've influenced my viewpoint but leaving ten years between this and my first viewing of the film meant making sure I had no bias or as little bias as possible. The viewing of this film came first last year when I was just completing some of my articles for "A Filmmaker's Guide..." I then went through the pain of actually sitting through this film once. I thought it was awful and so I left it six months, stored a reminder on my phone and then watched it when the reminder went off six months later. Again, it was still bloody awful. Then, I set yet another reminder on my phone for 6 months after that and now we're here and I've just finished watching it - and yes, it was still awful. Filled with all the clichés, the most typical tropes, a common storyline and terrible acting, this movie is a low budget, unsuccessful mess of a film and the filmmaker should be ashamed of it.

First of all, the movie is packed to the full with plot-holes. There's very little explanation for why, in the modern day, there would be someone without a social security number working in real estate and why there would also be someone receiving mail and living in someone else's house without having given their ID etc. into the mailing service in order to do so. And if he doesn't receive any mail, for a grown adult man, that's worrying.

Another problem I had with this movie is that it is nowhere as good as the original, not even in the ballpark. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's a remake of something that had a pretty awesome sequel but apart from that, this film has really done it down in the dirt. There was literally nothing that made me thrilled or chilled, nothing that moved me and nothing that caught me off-guard. Everything went according to how I pictured it in my head and so, as there were no surprises, this cannot be called a thriller/suspense film. It was plain awful.

The next thing is the acting. Let's just forget Amber Heard is there because everyone knows that a plank of wood could probably act better than her. Apart from that, everyone else was...oh wait, they were just as bad. Right. Nothing seemed realistic and all the acting was overly forced, overly cliché, even some of the lines sounded weird because they weren't spoken naturally. It just felt like a bit of a mess and a low-budget pile of crap because they couldn't afford any good actors.

Then there's the storyline. Now not only is the storyline incredibly predictable in all of its aspects - it is also very planned. What I mean is you could plan out the events in your head after a few minutes into the film and I can almost guarantee that whatever you're thinking is exactly what happens in the film. It's just that predictable and planned. I can't say that I was ever kept on the edge of my seat, there was nothing to guess about and there was nothing to make me question anything. It was all very much of a mess and I just kept asking myself when this was going to end. The ending itself was far, far less impressive than I had hoped. Even in my past viewings, this ending was dire.

In conclusion, the one mark is awarded to cinematography because there are good moments of directing and cinema skill shown. There are tracking shots, many cuts in order to speed up the time sequence and other standards of thriller cinema, nothing extreme or cool though. However, the rest of the film was terrible. It was just really, really bad.