Occasionally a low-budget B-movie style film will break ranks and become a minor hit. This can be said of THE STEPFATHER, a film made in the late #80s craze for horror-at-home style thrillers which bombarded the box office, including amongst their rank fare such as FATAL ATTRACTION. Where THE STEPFATHER succeeds is in a script which prefers subtlety over in-your-face blood and guts shocks, and a story which doesn't spoon-feed the audience and remains tight and complex. Running at just over eighty minutes, every scene is designed to further the plot in some way making for a very satisfying experience, with plot development occurring all the time so it stays interesting.
The film also benefits from a career-best turn from the widely unrecognised Terry O'Quinn, who played a number of stereotypical bad-guy roles back around this period but who never got the recognition he deserved perhaps in light of this movie. O'Quinn is magnificent as the friendly, mild-mannered family guy who also happens to be a psychotic killer on occasion and the scenes in which he loses his cool are riveting. It's amazing the abrupt turn O'Quinn makes from being a seemingly peace-loving father one moment to a knife-wielding psychopath the next, very cold and chilling. The supporting cast is also a good one, with the other actors and actresses giving wisely subdued performances in order to make room for O'Quinn. Particularly good are Jill Schoelen as the curious stepdaughter who discovers the truth and Stephen Shellen as the hunter out for revenge. Only Shelley Hack is underused (and barely seen) as the wife who doesn't realise anything.
The film isn't gory but then it shouldn't be: another strength of THE STEPFATHER is the realism of it, and lots of splashing blood would have dissolved the atmosphere it builds up. I liked the strong characterisation and the psychology behind O'Quinn's warped persona which is scarily understandable and the tight script which leaves no room for plot holes. THE STEPFATHER is a breath of fresh air in a stale genre, an offbeat and unpredictable movie which grips from beginning to end and focuses on the human mind as a source of horror instead of a silly scaly monster, thus making the terrors "closer to home" as it were.
The film also benefits from a career-best turn from the widely unrecognised Terry O'Quinn, who played a number of stereotypical bad-guy roles back around this period but who never got the recognition he deserved perhaps in light of this movie. O'Quinn is magnificent as the friendly, mild-mannered family guy who also happens to be a psychotic killer on occasion and the scenes in which he loses his cool are riveting. It's amazing the abrupt turn O'Quinn makes from being a seemingly peace-loving father one moment to a knife-wielding psychopath the next, very cold and chilling. The supporting cast is also a good one, with the other actors and actresses giving wisely subdued performances in order to make room for O'Quinn. Particularly good are Jill Schoelen as the curious stepdaughter who discovers the truth and Stephen Shellen as the hunter out for revenge. Only Shelley Hack is underused (and barely seen) as the wife who doesn't realise anything.
The film isn't gory but then it shouldn't be: another strength of THE STEPFATHER is the realism of it, and lots of splashing blood would have dissolved the atmosphere it builds up. I liked the strong characterisation and the psychology behind O'Quinn's warped persona which is scarily understandable and the tight script which leaves no room for plot holes. THE STEPFATHER is a breath of fresh air in a stale genre, an offbeat and unpredictable movie which grips from beginning to end and focuses on the human mind as a source of horror instead of a silly scaly monster, thus making the terrors "closer to home" as it were.