Like Denzel Washington (see below) Kevin Cosnter is another actor with a strong quality control. He might not be in favor anymore (it's probably 15 years since he was A-list) but he's generally picked projects that range from fantastic (Thirteen Days) to solid (The Guardian). Costner movies, on the whole, also have a distinctly old-fashioned quality to them...taking their time to establish character, situations and dramatic tension. All these aspects are in play in his new supernatural thriller The New Daughter...apart from one. The quality.
It's well made (by Luis Berdejo, writer of the REC movies). Well acted. And has an intriguing central premise as newly divorced writer moves into the obligatory creepy country house with his two kids. The eldest teenage daughter is strangely drawn to a mound in the expansive back yard...which isn't quite the Indian Burial ground that Kev suspects it is. The scares don't really work, the set-pieces lack tension (a crime for a movie designed to make you poop yourself) and the final revelation lacks any real horror...just a feeling of 'Oh my. How scientifically interesting and inconvenient. Kev himself is as capable a leading man as he's ever been and no one will be happier than me when his career is resurrected back to the big leagues. But that outcome will be less and less probable if Kev permanently loses the quality control as he has with The New Daughter. List under 'spectacularly average'.
1 comment:
This was okay. Nothing special but watchable enough. The potential was there to make this a pretty cool, weird and creepy little flick. But the writer and director just decided to make it a standard, run of the mill effort. There is plenty of subtext about fathers and their lack of understanding of thier daughters and of all the 'changes' they go through. Shame it's just not a lot weirder and actually scary.
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