The Stepfather

Seen at: Carmike 10 in Fort Collins, 1:15 pm on Nov. 1.

It was interesting contemporary premise---a psychopathic serial killer who continually remarries women with children, and then murders the family, moving on to the next one.

Began badly, with an assault on Christmas in the first scene. Hollywood hates Christmas, of course, as I've mentioned, and takes every opportunity to show how dysfunctional it all is. Peace on Earth is for suckas.

Story held up fairly well, but I grew enraged at the overt predictive programming telling us that anyone who uses cash instead of electronic transactions is to be feared. This was released by Sony Screen Gems, which I've noticed in the past is very much on board with pushing the idea in its movies that we should surrender to the electronic control grid for our own safety and security (specifically in last year's Untraceable, which curiously enough was also set largely in a basement in Portland ,Oregon). The moral of this movie: if only we'd let the police track our every move, none of these dreadful things would happen to us!

Also the story gets a little wild the end and lacks the appropriate Hitchcockian emotional release. I could overlook that, if it weren't for the overtly totalitarian messages being thrown at me.

Verdict: Could have been half-way decent, but ruined by embedded Fascism.