Sous le masque d'un ange

I recently watched The Stepdaughter (2000) on Tubi. The story follows a troubled, orphaned young woman who resents never having a real family or a happy childhood. Fueled by a desire for revenge, she takes a job as a stable hand on a farm-where she may have found the perfect family to target, for more reasons than one.

Directed by Peter Liapis (Ghoulies), the film stars Andrea Roth (War), Lisa Dean Ryan (Doogie Howser, M. D.), Jaimz Woolvett (Unforgiven), and Cindy Pickett (Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

This feels like a made-for-TV movie in every possible way. The storyline is overly simplistic and far too convenient from start to finish. The acting and dialogue are painfully stiff, making every plot twist glaringly obvious. Nothing about the film feels authentic or realistic, and even the background music plays more like a soap opera than a thriller.

In conclusion, The Stepdaughter is awful. I'd rate it a 1/10 and recommend skipping it.

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.

No pun intended - with movies like this one, you may not always know what you'll be getting. In this case, you have a movie that could be called decent. Not because it will surprise you (quite the opposite, this is as predictable as you can imagine - again no pun intended) ... but because it has some nice moments in it ... although nice may not be the right word to use for it ... because she is not playing nice (yes I know another pun - I live for them, like characters in movies like this one live for revenge ... or mayhem in general).

If you are into easy thrillers (or whatever you would call this very low budget effort) and do not care that much about acting and other things (quality of sets and video and so forth) ... you could do worse I reckon .. on the other hand, there are so many movies ... maybe you should not waste your time on something like this ... as I did.

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.

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...