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Stepfather: Unrated Director's Cut (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (27th March 2010). |
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The Film
 Remakes are often credited with being the downfall of the movie industry, showing a genuine lack of creativity in Hollywood as no fresh ideas are being put together. Yet done creatively enough, remakes can be a great fun time as something different from the original but with a new level of intrigue. What’s really wreaking havoc on horror is the 'PG-13' remake. I’m not shy about my love of the gore and bizzre in movies, even though I don’t find it always necessary, the big problem is that the 'PG-13' remake removes everything from the original that helps to give it an edge and push the boundaries, even if it was a formula slayer movie. Modern remakes like the new “The Stepfather” (2009) just see horror as a price point, thinking that a few cheap scares can lead to the insane profitability the genre has seen recently. Fortunately, this poorly put together, disinteresting remake didn’t double it’s budget like many horror movies are capable of, meaning if there are sequels hopefully the studio is smart enough to kick Nelson McCormick off the project. Just as the original, the film begins with the sociopathic chameleon calling himself “David Harris” (Dylan Walsh) infiltrating a new family after murdering some family in Utah. Here he’s gotten into what appears to be a deep relationship with Susan Harding (Sela Ward), a recent divorcee. The two begin a romance without question until Susan’s oldest son Michael (Penn Badgley) just returned from a year at a military school to reform his bad boy ways. But Michael isn’t so amiable to this new attempted stepfather (even though he hasn’t married Susan yet) and Michael is quickly suspicious of David’s tricks as David makes a few slip ups putting Michael on his trail of deception. Yet he never really figures anything out until the end of the movie and it’s so poorly paced and written that you stop caring anyways. Everything you’ve heard about the earlier “The Stepfather” (1987) being sweet thanks to some incredible acting from the amazing Terry O’Quinn is probably true, but in no way can Dylan Walsh hold a candle to Terry O’Quinn. Walsh plays up the crazy of the character far too much, lacking any sort of subtlety or creepy malice to the character that could make him interesting. And the plot wouldn’t help you out anyways because each character is so poorly conceived there’s no ground for the actors to build from. Add on that each actor is pretty terrible in their role that it’s basically digging it’s own grave, a metaphor that is probably more brutal than anything you will see in the film. But looking between the 1987 “Stepfather” and this 2009 incarnation the biggest problem to me is the gender reversal of the main character, switching it from the daughter of the original to a son in this film. Rather than playing with the idea of the final girl, this version of the film just has the son lumber his way through a hamfisted investigation of a stepfather who is obviously crazy and lacking any subtlety. Thus when you get to the final battle, there is no final girl encounter and it’s a fairly tame figt to begin with, just with a lot of falling rather than with the intrigue of this near supernatural figure that can be shot, stabbed, burned alive even and come back to kill you as most of the great 80’s killers would. Instead of having any powerful female roles, there’s just the wife and girlfriend who stand to the side and wait to be protected by the son in the final encounter with the stepfather, though for Michael’s girlfriend (Amber Heard) this is almost an overdose of character information considering all she’s done for the rest of the film is spend the entire film showing off her ribcage in a bikini or underwear. Horror at the margins can be a genre of intrigue, fun, interest and even empowerment when done properly. This remake of “The Stepfather” is almost too poor for words, throwing out all sort of killer movie conventions and refusing to even have the slightest bit of fun to it. There are dangling threads of plot all over the place, including a detective scene at the beginning that makes no sense and really broke my heart as it showed a quick sight of Deirdre Lovejoy as a cop in the opening scenes, giving me hope that I would get to see more of “The Wire” (2002-2008) alumni getting work. But then it cuts every ounce of policing out of the film. Even the ending to the film is so abrupt and ridiculous it doesn’t even tease a sequel very well. The credits role immediately after the last sentence, not even fading in the terrible terrible credits music and just pausing on the final frame with credits rolling over it, drawing what may have been the only big laugh I got out of the film as it’s almost the sort of move a 70’s grindhouse movie bootleg would pull. Throw in some bad product placement and musical soundtrack (though Charlie Clouser’s score is pretty good), and you have your bland 'PG-13' generic horror remake. No thanks.
Video
The film is presented in a 2.40:1 aspect ratio in 1080p 24/fps with AVC MPEG-4 compression encoding, though is still fairly inconsistent in quality. In scenes where the lighting is dim the film suddenly explodes with grain, while in scenes that have a heavily emphasized foreground focus, the background gets lost in a grainy, muddy mess of dull colors. This is the sort of inconsistency that blu-ray shouldn’t necessarily have with a newer film, but quality wasn’t exactly their prime value. Still the color schemes of the film are far too dull, confusing a darker frame with a more haunting environment.
Audio
The audio however is much more crisp in the English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track mixed at 48kHz/24-bit. With Charlie Clouser’s nice original score brings some good movement to the film and the sound is mostly clean in the way that audio is balanced between dialogue, score and ambient noises. What becomes a problem though is the bad music selection of pop songs to try and make the movie more current, but it just comes off as a bit of corporate crossover rather than music to fit a scene. The film also comes with Portuguese and French DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 also mixed at 48kHz/24-bit and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital Track. There are also English, English for the hearing impaired, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles.
Extras
The film comes with a fair amount of extras, including an audio commentary track, a couple featurettes, a gag reel, the theatrical trailer, a collection of TV spot promos, "MovieIQ " interactive feature and BD-Live access. First off is the option to play the film with “movieIQ” interactive feature which is basically a live version of IMDB that plays on top of the film. Handy if you don’t keep a laptop or something with the internet nearby when you’re watching a movie, but a little cumbersome to use and annoying after you get tired of it in a few minutes. It comes with its own explanatory featurette that runs for 1 mintue. I was at first a bit intrigued to hear what kind of praise or excuses Nelson McCormick would offer up in his audio commentary with actors Dylan Walsh and Penn Badgley. McCormack talks about how he wants to reference the original, praising his actors and praising the people that worked on the film. They joke with eachother and awkwardly laugh their way through a pause filled and generally boring commentary, where McCormack tries to explain the obvious and then the actors either offer insight or poke a joke and the trio nervously laughs together. Any insight they have to offer up for the film is either so disinteresting or blatantly obvious in the film that it may be one of the least worthwhile commentaries I’ve had the pleasure of seeing considering there are no good performances, effects or directing movies in the film worth hearing about. The first featurette is “Open House: Making the Film” which runs for 20 minutes and 12 seconds, acting as the making-of featurette for the film. Speaking with producers Mark Morgan and Greg Moordian, director Nelson McCormick and others about how they put the film together. Moordian makes the obvious point that he just sort of picked the idea for remaking “The Stepfather” off of a list of great horror movies and then throwing it together. All the actors manage to stroke eachother’s egos, complimenting eachother even though their performances are all sub-par, and a general round of compliments for a film that isn’t deserving. Still it puts together a fairly regular making-of feel with a large amounts of talking heads, behind-the-scenes footage (that can be incredibly rough) and clips from the film. “Visualizing the Stunts” featurette somehow runs for 11 minutes and 35 seconds, considering how few stunts there are in the film for a horror movie, there’s mostly just talk about stunt coordinators and these stunt doubles from director Nelson McCormick who seems obsessed with how his stunt men look like the actors. There’s nothing really unique here or interesting, just an overbloated documentary to show some stunts that have all been done so much that even the stunt coordinators admit that they are simple. The gag reel runs for 4 minutes and 52 seconds, seemingly made on someone’s netbook considering it’s insanely low quality and ‘Windows Movie Maker Feel’ featuring some goofing around on set and typical little mistakes and more swearing than was in the entire film. Next is the theatrical trailer runs for 2 minutes and 53 seconds. There are TV spots 6 in all and include: - “New Face” runs for 32 seconds. - “Nice Guy” runs for 32 seconds. - “Protect” runs for 32 seconds. - “Too Friendly” runs for 32 seconds. - “Disappoint” runs for 32 seconds. - “Too Late” runs for 32 seconds. Bonus trailers are for: - “Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day” runs for 1 minute and 48 seconds. - “Armored” runs for 2 minutes and 26 seconds. - “Blu-ray Disc is High Definition!” runs for 2 minutes and 5 seconds. - “Soul Power” runs for 1 minute and 58 seconds. - “2012” runs for 2 minutes and 52 seconds. - “The Damned United” runs for 2 minutes and 5 seconds. - “Zombieland” runs for 2 minutes and 3 seconds. - “Breaking Bad” runs for 32 seconds. - “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” runs for 2 minutes and 31 seconds. - “Prom Night” runs for 2 minutes and 18 seconds. - “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” runs for 2 minutes and 31 seconds. - “Universal Soldier: Regeneration” runs for 1 minute and 25 seconds. Finally the disc is BD-Live enabled, giving those with a Blu-ray player connected to the internet an opportunity to look at some Sony Previews and other related sony products online.
Overall
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