The Stepfather

Armed with Terry O’Quinn’s magnetic performance, The Stepfather ultimately manages to overcome its almost aggressively uneven atmosphere to establish itself as a solid little ’80s thriller. The film, which details O’Quinn’s serial family killer Jerry Blake ongoing efforts at winning over his new wife’s suspicious teenage daughter (Jill Schoelen’s Stephanie), has been infused with a deliberate pace that generally seems at odds with the inherently salacious premise, with the less-than-enthralling vibe undoubtedly exacerbated by an entirely needless subplot following a former victim’s brother as he attempts to track Jerry down. It’s due almost entirely to O’Quinn’s remarkably compelling work that The Stepfather remains relatively engaging even through its overtly underwhelming stretches, as the actor does a superb job of ensuring that Jerry never quite comes off as a run-of-the-mill horror-movie psycho – which only heightens the impact of those moments wherein the character drops the blandly charming exterior and demonstrably loses his temper. The otherwise pervasive absence of outwardly positive elements is inevitably compounded by the consistently predictable nature of Donald E. Westlake’s screenplay, and although the action-packed finale is admittedly quite stirring, The Stepfather never quite becomes the irresistibly tongue-in-cheek slasher one might’ve expected based on the setup (and boy, is it dated).

**1/2 out of ****