Monday, Oct. 19, 2009

'The Stepfather' could've been something special

By Edward Robertson, atomictown.com

A good scary movie exploits our basic anxieties. Thus the runaway brilliance of The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan's timeless tale of killer trees.

As an emancipated orphan since the age of three, I don't know much about what you all call "parents," let alone this whole step-parent thing everyone's so into these days. But I imagine the idea of some new semi-parent moving in to boss you around and hog up the TV with football games can be a scary one.

-- Times, theaters.

On the bright side, having a second parent doubles the chances one of them is going to stash booze around the house, and who are they going to complain to if you steal it? The spouse they were hiding it from in the first place? They would have to be pretty damn drunk to do that.

Now where was I? Oh yeah: the important thing is you're right to hate and fear anyone not biologically related to you, a wholly natural instinct that just might end up saving lives in The Stepfather.

Sela Ward is living every single mom's dream: she's unknowingly become engaged to a serial killer. The rest of her family has warmed to soon-to-be stepfather Dylan Walsh, but when eldest son Penn Badgley returns from military school, he's got his doubts.

After Walsh has trouble keeping his background straight, and an elderly neighbor turns up dead, Badgley has more than doubts. But with no hard evidence that his new dad isn't who he says he is, it's a race against time to expose him before he kills Badgley's whole family.

The previews on The Stepfather set off my ridiculous-dar ($39.95, The Sharper Image) pretty hard. I was basically expecting a googly-eyed, hoo-ah! slasher flick, once again proving the entire advertising industry is nothing more than a complicated scam to get us to buy things.

Imagine my surprise, then, when director Nelson McCormick took the movie down a quiet, almost leisurely path. Walsh is established as a killer right off the bat, maximizing the initial tension as he moves in on a new family. The details of Badgley's discoveries are handled with a steady competence that never feels forced or unbelievable.

Except exposing Walsh's secret takes a long, long time. It takes so long I had to shave twice mid-movie, and I shave so infrequently I've carried the same bottle of shaving cream through three homes in two different states. While we know what Walsh is up to from the start, the characters get locked in a loop of "Is he or isn't he?" that drags on until you want to strip off the gloves and start slapping people. (What, you don't wear gloves to the theater? When I'm eating spilled popcorn, I know I don't want to touch that floor.)

In the meantime, at least we get to see a lot of Badgley's girlfriend Amber Heard, who quite wisely is kept in a bikini or her underwear for about 90 percent of her screen time. Nothing amps up a thriller like 23-year-olds pretending to be high schoolers as they lounge around a pool for hours on end.

I'd be cool with that if either of their characters had anything worth listening to, but as written by J.S. Cardone, they're pretty much just placeholders. Walsh is given the most personality of the bunch, and thumbs-up on that: your normal serial killer is so brilliant he makes Newton look like Corky and so perfect he makes Perfectobot look like Clumsytron. Walsh makes mistakes, gets worried, acts human.

That makes him creepier than movie psychopaths usually are. Cut 10-15 minutes and brush up the dialogue, and The Stepfather could have been something special. As is, it's just skilled enough to stay watchable.

Grade: B-