Instinct de survie

The New Daughter is an odd one, a creepy Kevin Costner vehicle that almost seems like an M. Night Shyamalan idea that didn't quite take flight from the drawing board. Nevertheless it's a good enough time at the movies, and there's genuinely skin crawling moments too. Costner, in solemn mode, plays a father who relocates to South Carolina with his kids. As if an obligatory adjustment period isn't bad enough, soon his teenage daughter (Pan's Labyrinth's Ivana Baquero, skillful but an odd choice to play all American white boy Kevin's daughter) starts acting strange, and I mean Stranger than your usual garden variety brand of pubescent restlessness. There's something out there in those rural woods, something that's drawing the girl's attention and slowly start possessing her. Father Costner is creeped out and desperate, seeking help from anyone he can, including a professor of far flung urban legend mythology (Noah Taylor), the creepy previous owner of his new home (screen legend James Gammon in his last living film role) and his kid's foxy local schoolteacher (Samantha Mathis). It's a spooky enough little flick, albeit cobbled together from several other better movies. There's creature effects later on that score some points, and atmospheric cinematography, but ultimately it's average, middle ground material.

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.

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)

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.

A decent little "family in new home" horror film. I like the whole mound idea with creepy creatures living under it. But, this film actually does a good job of achieving the "less is more" approach, focusing on the inner family conflict and the confrontational young daughter coming into her teens, and using that as the main suspense element. I'm always a fan of Costner so it was good seeing him in a horror, plus the kids did well with their parts too.