The Stepdaughter

The problem with this TV movie? It isn't trashy enough! Andrea Roth's portrayal of twisted anti-heroine Susan Heller is the saving grace of this tawdry thriller. She alternates sweetness and villainy well but there are times when she could have hammed it up more. I also found the structure of the film amateur. It starts improbably and little background information is revealed. It is not clear why Susan revisits the horse-ranch until more than half-way through. Little is revealed about Susan's mysterious upbringing, leaving her murderous deeds harder to understand. Another problem was the dour performance by the other daughter who was supposed to represent goodness in contrast to Susan's evilness. She was far from sympathetic, allowing Susan to take centre stage. Not the best of its genre.

I'd never seen this before. And man was I shocked to see Tommy Gavin's wife Janet and super wow Buck Rogers is in it too!

This way over predictable schlock is really remindful of a Hallmark Channel movie. I mean it is really pretty bad.

The general gist of course is the silly stepdaughter becomes a creepy killer because of whatever background she had as if that's some sort of excuse. In the tradition of the Stepfather series of movies which were also fairly bad.

The movie is full of overused cliches and dumb characters. And the end was really bad and dumb. But at least there were closing words from Buck Rogers.

3/10.

not a great film by any stretch of imagination but also not the worse of this B movie thriller genre (what? no Billy R. Moses?).I thought the villainess was passably convincing and compelling and I absolutely rooted for her over the daughter-from-hell good daughter...I dont know if it was the acting or the role but she really really annoyed me. The actor playing the "slow" brother gave a performance that was insulting to special people everywhere (even in comparison to Cuba Gooding Jr and Sean Penn). I so wanted this to be a bad guy wins movie. The actress who played the mother wasnt bad..i know I have seen her but cant place her name right now

An unsuspecting family takes in a woman named Susan (Andrea Roth), who claims to have been in a car accident. Of course, the viewers know that Susan has just committed a coldblooded murder. The victim just happens to work on the very ranch that Susan has now "stumbled" upon.

The family has no idea that this woman knows who they are. Only the daughter seems to smell a rat. Mom and dad are oblivious, and junior even goes so far as to take Susan to a cave to show her the bottomless pit he's discovered. No one else knows about it.

This could come in very handy!

THE STEPDAUGHTER is a suspenseful movie, though it's pretty obvious what Susan's up to and why she's picked this particular family. Her state of mind is shown to be... troubled. Especially, since she has a doll that she talks to. A lot! The tension builds well, and Ms. Roth's character is sly and diabolical...

This film generates a lot of hate but it's not so bad. It is teribly format and there are so many ananswered qudestions and loose ends but ... it's a made-for-tv movie that has to rein in the blood and gore and doesn't care about things making sense, For example, Susan does say something about her stepfather (not much) but because of the very limited backstory we don't really get why the film called The Stepdaughter. The way she answers questions it's as if she's trying to get caught in lies. But... Andrea Roth is extremly dishy and it's nice to see her runnning around and the ranch setting is really beautiful, so it's not too bad a ride at all.