Ok, before we begin, I am going to preface this review with some complete honesty – the only reason I watched The Stepfather was because I saw the preview on Netflix had Dan Humphrey from Gossip Girl in it, and he looked like he would rather be anywhere else in the entire world (except maybe on Gossip Girl again). And so I thought to myself: “yep, this is going to be terrible” and “yep, I have to watch this.”
I find Penn Badgely kind of… mesmerizing as an actor. Most of the stuff I’ve seen him in (Gossip Girl, You, John Tucker Must Die and now The Stepfather) I really feel like he could not care less for (and he has said as much, in regards to Gossip Girl at least). However, even though he is clearly having a Bad Time in these features, he usually does a pretty good job. Badgely was quite good in the first two seasons of Gossip Girl – aside from Leighton Meester, who lets face it was the real star of the show as Blair and an absolute delight in every scene she was in, Badgely was probably the next best actor. He was even better in You. And to be honest, he’s not too bad here (and The Stepfather was released in 2009, which was the peak of Gossip Girl popularity). That’s why I find him so interesting as an actor – he keeps getting these same kind of roles but that doesn’t stop him from turning in a generally decent performance. He always makes the best of what he’s been given.
It’s a shame then that he’s got another kind of bad role in a generally quite bad feature. The Stepfather is, to sum it up briefly, boring. It’s very predictable and does nothing new with the genre. After I watched it I found out it was a remake of a film from 1987, and I wouldn’t mind checking that version of The Stepfather out at some point just to see how much of a downgrade this recent version is.
Badgley plays Michael, the teenage son of Susan (Sela Ward), who enters into a relationship with Dylan Walsh’s titular stepfather, going by the name of David Harris for this family. To both the credit of the movie and Walsh, there is a genuine attempt to make David a real threat. He is introduced at the start of the movie in media res – his previous family, killed by his own hand, lies downstairs as he changes his appearance to adopt a new personality and therefore find a new family to murder. Unfortunately, the movie cannot maintain the tension, as there aren’t enough genuinely tense moments.
After moving on to a new state, David meets Susan in a supermarket and strikes up a conversation with her by interrupting an argument that she is having with her two youngest children about cookies. As a woman in the year 2020 if a random man came up to me in the supermarket and started talking to me I would not be flirtatiously checking my makeup in my compact mirror, I’d be trying to escape as fast as possible. Unfortunately, this woman does the former rather than the latter, and lo and behold, Patrick Bateman knock-off gets another family to murder.
Fast-forward six months and Dan – I mean Michael – is returning home from military school (if you want to know more about this plot-point, too bad, the movie reckons there isn’t anything more to know). Michael is upset about his parent’s divorce and is dismayed to find that his mother has not only moved on with a new man, but they are engaged! (This also raises another question – David and Susan never actually get married, so is the title of this movie really accurate?)
Susan is worried that Michael won’t warm to Patrick – I mean David – and she’s right. Her son immediately picks up on the fact that this new guy is a bit shifty (especially because five seconds after meeting Michael, David invites him down to the basement to show him his giant serial-killer storage cupboards and discuss how important family is to him – seems like a great way to make a good first impression). The rest of the movie continues on how you’d imagine. David becomes increasingly unhinged, his web of lies unravel, yada yada yada.
The movie is generic but I do think it is more engaging that we know this guy is a killer from the get-go. It makes it interesting to see how he acts with the family and the build-up to what we know will be the inevitable climax where he tries to kill them all. However, there are lots of “meh” moments, and a few particularly bad moments. For me the absolute worst part of the movie is when David, investigating how much information is really out there about him, types americasmostwanted.com into a search engine to find the website instead of, you know, just typing it into the address bar. The horror.
In regards to the acting, it is generally fine. Badgely does quite a good job, especially towards the end of the movie where he becomes increasingly paranoid about David’s true intentions. Walsh is less good – his villain often slips into being cartoonish, and therefore comical – not the intention the director had in mind, I am assuming. Ward is alright as the mother, but her naivety about David, essentially caused by her desire to not be alone, is a bit of a step back for women. Even more of a step back for women is Amber Heard’s character Kelly, Michael’s girlfriend, who basically just swans around in a bikini or underwear and ends up being a bit of a one-note damsel, intended purely for the male gaze. She gets some really unfortunate dialogue with Michael, mainly concerning how she wants him to be obsessed with her instead of the actual serial-killer living in his house. She also gets slut-shamed by David. It’s gross.
Overall, The Stepfather is basically just okay. It’s got some decent performances and one or two tense moments. It’s not the kind of movie that is going to offer up any major moral insights or anything like that, but it would be a good choice to pop on on a Saturday night when you have some friends over and you want to watch something a bit silly.
BEST BITS:
– The big beautiful houses that everyone lives in in this movie – I could probably recreate something like them on The Sims…
WORST BITS:
– David commenting on Kelly’s appearance when she’s wearing a bikini.
– The missed opportunities for suspense.
– People not knowing how to use modern technology.
FINAL RATING: 5/10
