Full Review

“The Stepfather” (Screen Gems) is director Nelson McCormick’s tedious remake of Joseph Rubin’s 1987 chillfest of the same title which, like its two sequels, received an “O” classification from the Office for Film and Broadcasting. Though the homicidal episodes in this misguided attempt at a reboot are relatively restrained, the moral outlook of the latest version earns it a similar thumbs-down.

Returning home from the military school to which he has been consigned for past unruliness, Michael (Penn Badgley) finds his divorced mother Susan (Sela Ward) living with, and engaged to David (Dylan Walsh), a seemingly affable but strangely resume-free fellow she met in a grocery store.

As the audience knows from the opening scenes, and as Michael gradually begins to suspect, David’s smiles and pro-family sentiments disguise a murderous agenda, though no coherent motive is ever suggested for his pursuit of it. With viewers thus deliberately tipped off to the mystery man’s true identity from the start, the only potential for suspense lies in waiting for the other characters – a remarkably dense lot -- to catch up with the audience.

In the interval, we’re introduced to Michael’s girlfriend Kelly (Amber Heard) whose wardrobe seems to consist almost entirely of bikinis and underwear, and to Susan’s sister who is involved in a lesbian relationship that J.S. Cardone’s script implicitly and matter-of-factly endorses.

Though scenes of Michael and Kelly clinching on his bed or in the backyard pool are not overly explicit, the fact that both are still in high school suggests that such activity is not only martially but developmentally premature.

The classifications are as follows:

• A-I -- general patronage;
• A-II -- adults and adolescents;
• A-III -- adults;
• A-IV**
• L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
• O -- morally offensive.