TheStepfather

Best of the New Releases: Um...
I apologize if you've spent the last 24 hours curled in the fetal position, shaking like a newborn lamb out of fear that Horror Squad would not be bringing you a list of this week's discs. Don't worry, I'm just a day late. The reason I'm late? Well, there just isn't much of note this week.

The biggest title of the week is The Stepfather remake and I think we all know that's nothing to get excited about. The movie is watchable, but only in "on cable, got nothing else to do" kind of way. I also highly doubt that the Unrated Director's Cut on Blu-ray really has anything particularly eye catching to warrant the unrated label.

Indifference is, perhaps, one of the most frustrating attitudes one can have towards a film. If you love a film, singing its praises is a natural by-product. Hating a film can often times be an even more cathartic experience than loving a film, as vitriol is always easily on tap. But not particularly caring one way or the other? That's oddly frustrating for me.

The Stepfather, the most recent collaboration between producer J.S. Cardone and director Nelson McCormick (the last being their remake of Prom Night, a project I feel safe calling the most annoying horror film of 2008, and even that's being diplomatic), is another entry to a new Hollywood tradition of finding vaguely recognizable films from the 1980s and remaking them on the cheap. Now, I'm not one to bemoan this business model; it's fine if the end result has enough originality to it that there is at least the illusion that the film is something more than a commodity to draw in a big opening weekend.

Fortunately The Stepfather does have enough airiness to it and enough interesting performers in it to convince even a hardened cynic that money wasn't the only motivation for all involved, that creatively the team behind it did want to deliver to new audiences a story of the reverse-black widow, of a man who lulls vulnerable single-mothers into thinking he wants to join their family, only to bite their heads off (figuratively, there's no actual cannibalism involved) when their back is turned.

Best of the New Releases: Drag me to Hell, Infestation, The Objective
I feel like I'm one of the only people who wasn't completely won over by "Sam Raimi's return to horror" when it came out in theaters at the end of May. My biggest problem was that script wise it very much so felt like an '80s Raimi movie, but the CGI visuals kept reminding me that the year was 2009 and the director was a changed, studio-friendly man. That said, I've been looking forward to this disc so that I can give Drag Me to Hell another shot. There's really not a whole lot by way of special features, however, so rest assured that in standard Raimi fashion there will be another DVD/Blu-ray within a year's time. And another after that, and another after that, and...

That's really about it as far as Best New Releases goes, though special mention should be made of Infestation and The Objective; the former being an above average Syfy channel movie the Syfy channel didn't make, the latter being an interesting but flat look at aliens in the desert from Blair Witch Project co-director Daniel Myrick.