The Stepfather

We watched a thriller in media last week and it was called the stepfather, to be honest when i heard the name, i thought "honestly how and what could they make a thriller about involving a stepfather!" but when i saw the picture on the board and i thought ok maybe it could be scary.....

Storyline
Michael returns home from military school to find his mother happily in love and living with her new boyfriend. As the two men get to know each other, he becomes more and more suspicious of the man who is always there with a helpful hand.

I thought that this film was really good, i thought that even though we knew what he was at the beginning it didn't spoil it or us, because we knew this and the characters didn't and i thought that this is a brilliant way of creating suspense. even though in lots of thrillers the suspense and fear are created from the unknown, knowing information that the characters don't know is a brilliant way of creating suspense.

  

This is a trailer to show what the film is about:

These are the main characters:
 

 

This is Micheal the son



This is Kelly, Micheal's girlfriend

This is the mum Susan: She marries David

And this is the crazy stepfather: David

Before we watched the film we predicted who would die in the film. These were my predictions: Susan the mum, Kelly the girlfriend would be injured, the two little children Beth and Sean were going to die, and Susan's sister Jackie would die... i would tell you if i was correct or not but i don't want to spoil it for you if you decide to watch it.

3 moments that i thought that were really suspenseful and why, these moments are:

1. At the beginning, when he's walking to the door and suddenly he has a flashback of the dead girl screaming.. this happened all of a sudden and i didn't expect that this, I was shocked and frightened for that little moment. I thought that this was suspenseful because they played Erie music before and made it look like nothing was happening and then suddenly the girl appears screaming.  

2. At the welcome back party when David says to Micheal to meet him in the basement, i automatically thought don't go down there Micheal, because i know what David has done. when hes walking down the basement, they make it suspenseful because of the music, it was slow and chilling.. made us think what's gonna happen when he gets to the end of the stairs, and they build it up by making his facial expressions look worried and by making him walk down the stairs slowly, also by the sound effects e.g. the floor board creaking. I was personally thinking "oh my god.. don't go down there Micheal". we are then relieved when we see that David is not gonna do anything to Micheal.

3. This clip is really suspenseful for me because I don't know if David is going to catch them, or is there going to get away, i have fear for Micheal because i don't want David to catch him, especially when he grabs Micheal's leg, it's distressing to see Micheal in that situation. As and audience I'm thinking 'hurry up, because i know that David is going to come up the stairs. this is what creates the suspense because we don't know if he's gonna get the other characters or if they will escape.

I think that this film is a typical genre film, this is a mainstream teenage thriller, it has the typical conventions of that genre. for example the shower curtians ripping when david fell in the bath, this was inspired by the film 'pyscho'. also they are normally set in the suburbs, with big houses and big back yards etc.