The Stepfather is a 2009 American horror thriller film and a remake of the 1987 film of the same name directed by Joseph Ruben, starring Penn Badgley, Dylan Walsh and Sela Ward.
Plot[]
| Spoiler Warning: The following contains important plot details of the entire film. |
The movie begins as a man named Grady Edwards (Dylan Walsh) transforms himself in a bathroom. He shaves off his beard, dyes his hair, and removes his brown contact lenses. He goes downstairs with his luggage and prepares himself peanut butter toast and coffee. As he leaves the house, the camera shows the bodies of his wife and her three children.
Meanwhile, a woman named Susan Harding (Sela Ward) is shopping in a grocery store with her youngest children where she meets Grady, who introduces himself as David Harris (a man who lost his wife and daughter in a car accident) and after charming her, they're engaged to be married six months later.
Susan's eldest son, Michael (Penn Badgley) who returns home from military school is wary of the situation. David invites Michael down to the basement where he has installed locked cabinets and tries to befriend him over tequila shots.
Michael's suspicions start when David uses the wrong name when mentioning his deceased daughter. After Susan says that an elderly neighbor named Mrs. Cutter warned her that America's Most Wanted ran a profile on a serial killer that looked like David, David barges into her house and throws her down her basement stairs, breaking her neck in the process.
Susan's ex-husband, Jay confronts David angrily about laying hands on his younger son, Sean after David grabbed him roughly for not turning down the volume on his video game and warns Susan that she doesn't know anything about David.
The doubts about David raise more suspicion especially when David quits his job working as a real estate agent for Susan's sister, Jackie (Paige Turco) to avoid displaying a photo ID and other forms of identification. Later, Jay confronts David about an apparent lie regarding his college history and David clubs him with a vase and suffocates him with a plastic bag. He sends Michael a text with Jay's phone saying that David checked out okay.
Two weeks later when Mrs. Cutter's body is discovered, David tells the family what happened. Michael is alarmed because he overheard David being told by the mailman, who gave less detail than David.
While Michael's girlfriend, Kelly (Amber Heard) tries to get Michael to focus on college applications, he grows more obsessed with the contradictions in David's stories.
Kelly tries to grab his attention by saying she is having sex with another guy, but Michael doesn't pay attention to her, so Kelly leaves the house. The situation comes to a head when David intercepts an email from Jackie about hiring an investigator. Then, David goes over to Jackie's house and drowns her in her pool.
Determined to discover what is in the locked cabinets, Michael breaks into the basement as Kelly keeps a lookout. While the basement, Michael discovers his father's body in a freezer. David knocks Kelly out and traps Michael in the basement.
The commotion awakens Susan and David starts berating her parenting skills, saying that he thought she could be "Mrs. Grady Edwards". On Susan's stunned reaction, David grimaces and asks, "Who am I here?"
Susan flees to the bathroom and locks herself in, but David kicks the door in, shattering the mirror behind it. Susan picks up a shard of the glass mirror, holding it behind her. David grabs her and they struggle. Susan manages to stab David in the neck with the shard and he falls to the floor, apparently dead.
Michael escapes from the basement and finds Kelly. They find Susan in the hallway across from the bathroom, thinking that David is dead, but David approaches from behind and blocks the stairs, chasing all three of them into the attic where he and Michael fight.
David and Michael fall onto the roof and then off the edge of it landing to the ground, where they lie unconscious. When Michael wakes up, he finds out he had been in a coma for just over a month and learns that David is still alive, fleeing the scene before the police arrived.
The end of the movie shows David (who has again changed his name to Chris Ames) working at a hardware store when he meets a woman (Jessalyn Gilsig) who was shopping with her two sons.
Cast[]
- Penn Badgley as Michael Harding
- Dylan Walsh as Grady Edwards / David Harris / Chris Ames
- Sela Ward as Susan Kerns Harding
- Amber Heard as Kelly Porter
- Paige Turco as Jackie Kerns
- Sherry Stringfield as Leah
- Jon Tenney as Jay M. Harding
- Nancy Linehan Charles as Mrs. Cutters
- Marcuis Harris as Detective Shay
- Skyler Samuels as Beth Harding
- Braeden Lemasters as Sean Harding
- Jessalyn Gilsig as Julie King
Production[]
The filming for "The Stepfather" began in March 2008 and ended on April 15, 2008.
Terry O'Quinn (who starred in the original version of "The Stepfather") was offered a cameo role in this film, but he turned it down.
Box Office[]
"The Stepfather" debuted at #5 at the box office, grossing $11,581,586 during its opening weekend for a worldwide gross of $31.2 million, against its budget of $20 million.
Critical Reception[]
"The Stepfather" received negative reviews.
Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 12%, based on 61 reviews with a rating average of 3.4/10.
The site's general consensus reads: "This tepid remake of the 1987 cult classic lacks the tension and satirical undercurrents of the original."
On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score, the film has a score of 33 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote of the film being "a piece, a handsome, thoughtfully crafted production that generates a mounting terror securely anchored by assured performances, consistent psychological persuasiveness and believable dialogue."
The New York Times called it "a clumsy remake of the 1987 cult thriller" and Empire called it "cliché-ridden and full of plot-holes."
Trailer[]
The Stepfather (2009) Trailer