The New Daughter

A recently divorced father (Kevin Costner) moves his teenage daughter Louisa (Ivana Baquero) and son Sam (Gattlin Griffith) to the rural town of Mercy, South Carolina for a fresh start. In the dark forest beyond their new house, strange noises can be heard, and soon the father comes to believe that there's something wrong with his daughter. Is it connected to the strange mound of earth amongst the trees?

"The New Daughter" is not a bad movie at all, but it's not especially great either and that's what I found so frustrating about it. It comes so very close to being brilliant but somehow fails when it should have succeeded. Perhaps part of the reason it fails is that it needed a stronger leading man at its centre. The entire movie rests upon Kevin Costner's shoulders and he seems to virtually sleepwalk through it. The only time you see a glimmer of emotion is when he pounds his fists gently against a wall in one scene to show his anger. The actors playing the children are fine, even if they don't exhibit a lot of emotive moments and simply go from A to B as required.

The director does a superb job providing a growing sense of dread at the situation, and there are a number of scenes where he employs the 'less is more' approach, leaving it up to the imagination of the audience as to what a dark shape amongst the trees might have been, or what might be making a strange noise behind a closed door. The movie has a slow, moody pace similar to movies such as "Signs" and "The Others" which also helps to enhance the atmosphere. The special effects in the later part of the movie are also very well done.

In conclusion, I would have to say that "The New Daughter" is 'okay'. It's certainly worth a rental if you like slower paced psychological horrors rather than the type of movie where everyone runs around attempting to avoid crazed killers. There's hardly any blood, and it does contain one or two good scares, although the plot is a bit predictable in places. I only wish that it was more than 'okay', because all of the elements were in place to make a far better movie and that's what ultimately frustrates me.

I came across this movie on YouTube free streaming movies. As most often is the case "free" movies aren't particularly good.

Kevin Costner is writer John James, after a recent divorce moves to a rural home in South Carolina with his young son and his pubescent daughter. There is a strange large mound behind the house near the edge of the woods.

Soon his daughter starts acting and dressing strangely, ultimately it is tied something going on in the mound that she visits at night, coming home muddy.

The movie is moderately interesting, Costner is in good form playing the type of character he has often played. The ending is pretty strange, I can't honestly say exactly what happened to his daughter.

It can be an interesting diversion if you don't have anything else to watch.

Not really sure why this falls in the horror category, thriller yes, but wasn't really anything scary as much as unsettling and I think that is were this movie hit the nail on the head.

As someone else mentioned this movie does give off the hint of signs, but with a twist, something that hits a little closer to home, and doesn't seem as far fetched as aliens.

As someone else mentioned that this movie is absolutely terrible, and i can't help but disagree, the movie kept me wondering the entire length and even once it was over. My eyes stayed glued, i never felt like i was bored or wondering when it would get to the "good stuff" It did seems to start off slow, and then ran really fast in the last 20 minutes, but i don't feel that was such a bad thing, as with thrillers its all in the build up anyways.

I don't ever consider thrillers to be a DVD purchase, as once you've seen it it has no replay value, but its definitely worth a hit on the netflix que.

Up to a certain point in The New Daughter, I was reminded of Dragonfly. Both are low budget Costner films about a man dealing with a family loss which has a haunting outcome. It has been a while since I saw Dragonfly. Nobody thought it was any good, but it is way better than this film. To start with the obvious, The New Daughter represents what may be Costner's most lazy performance. It seems he has no interest in the story whatsoever. After a while the Dragonfly connection starts to fade away, and the movie turns into something else, something worse unfortunately. The New Daughter is torpid, and is bogged down by too much content, and not enough suspense or intelligent dialogue.

If I am gonna give the film any credit, it would be for photography. This is a gorgeously shot film, where the nights are cold, eerie and evocative, and the safety of home is warm, glowing and golden. The best shot in the film is the last one, which barely makes up for the utter stupidity of the ending. There is much left to explain, but in the end, I don't really care.

The New Daughter, is a spooky story, which is occasionally interesting but is less so than it is sloppily executed, badly acted, and not worth your money.

As this movie opens, it seems to be literally riddled with clichés. A recent divorced father (Kevin Costner) decides to move with his two children into a creepy old house in the country, where they find what appears to be an old Indian burial ground. That really didn't seem to require much thought, did it. I was disappointed; somehow I was expecting something just a little more imaginative; a bit more out of the ordinary. I do have to give credit to the writers , though. After that extremely cliché opening, they manage to introduce a pretty well crafted story that rises above those clichés and that creates some suspense in the viewer.

Costner was the movie's greatest strength. He brought a well known presence to this movie and he played the part of the increasingly confused and concerned father quite well. Happily (from my point of view) the movie avoided going for yet another cliché - although there was the opportunity, there was no romance introduced for Costner. For the most part, the focus of the story remained pretty much on his strained relationship with his daughter and his increasing concern for her well being. The kids in this movie (Ivana Baquero and Gattlin Griffith) weren't amazing, but they also didn't detract from the story the way some child actors can. They were believable enough.

Director Luiso Berdejo (who has very little experience as a director) did a decent job using the setting to good advantage, and he created a realistic atmosphere of suspense, slowly rising to fear. There were a couple of things I found awkward in the movie. The introduction of the university professor and his TA, for example. They served little purpose except to give an explanation of what might have been happening with the burial mound. Perhaps there could have been a better way of unravelling the mystery than the introduction of a couple of otherwise unimportant and unnecessary characters. Also, although I fully understand the use of the analogy, the ant farm really wasn't required. I would have understood the movie even without it, and somehow it cheapened this a bit; it's the sort of plot device you expect to see in a made for TV movie.

This isn't bad. It's not one of the great horror movies of all time, but it isn't bad. (6/10)