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From Fear to Paternity

"The Stepfather", a remake of the 1987 film of the same name, is a by-the-numbers thriller that covers well-trodden ground, and feels days longer than its one hour and forty-five minute running time. The plot develops exactly as you would expect it to, so, with the exception of a few tense moments toward the end, there are no surprises here. This is a movie to see if you're really in the mood for theatre popcorn and don't want to be too distracted while you're snacking.

We meet the title character - played by Dylan Walsh of FX's "Nip/Tuck" - as he is preparing to leave the scene of his latest crime. It's a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood, and inside all initially seems well. That is, until we realize that the man whose morning routine we are following is in fact altering his appearance - shaving off his beard, putting in hair dye, and changing his eye color with contact lenses. He's obviously a fastidious guy: his bathroom items are perfectly lined up on the vanity, and later, in the kitchen, the toast and coffee he prepares have the sense of well-worn, precise routine. As we follow him out the door and then see the bodies of the family he is leaving behind, slumped over furniture in the kitchen and living room, we realize we are looking at a serial killer.

This gives us the character's basic modus operandi - though the script never provides any motivation for his actions - and the plot basically writes itself from here. The only questions are which family he is going to pick up next, how he is going to insinuate himself into their midst, and who is going to become suspicious and start asking questions about his intentions. Here, it's a single-parent family headed up by Sela Ward ("Sisters", "House M.D."), with two young children and a teenaged son, Michael, played by Penn Badgley ("Gossip Girl").

Michael comes home to his family after a couple of years at that hoary old screenwriting cliche, military school (does anyone actually know someone who has been sent away to military school?), and finds his mother newly engaged. Of course this new man is too good to be true - we know this because Michael's aunt helpfully observes, "He seems too good to be true!" He's warm, charming, helpful around the house, and intent on creating a close-knit family with his fiancée and her children. Unfortunately, he also has a short temper, is shifty about his past, and has a tendency to kill people who ask too many questions.

The process by which Michael's suspicions are piqued and confirmed is achingly gradual - this kind of a story should move along at a pretty fast pace, but the opposite is true here. What doesn't help at all is the script's tendency to telegraph its plot points from a mile away. An early shot of a chest freezer in the basement is a guarantee that someone will be making a grisly, frozen discovery as the story wraps up. A close up of someone's cell phone gives us a big hint that part of the plot will hinge on the timing of calls and texts between characters. And when someone yells about rotten boards in the attic floor during the climactic final showdown, you can bet that thirty seconds later, someone is going to be plunging through said floor.

There's nothing terrible about this movie - it's actually refreshingly light on gore - and the ending provides a few entertaining moments for viewers who aren't looking for anything too challenging. Unfortunately, when all is said and done, it just doesn't make much of an impression. The filmmakers are also unable to resist tacking on an epilogue that leaves the door open for a "Stepfather 2", so we may be revisiting this story again in a few years. With luck, the writers will have scared up a couple of original ideas by then.