In today’s video, we are going to summarize the Crime Thriller, The Stepfather. It is
the remake of a 1987’s film of the same title where Michael Harding returns home from
military school to find his mother living with her new boyfriend, David. As the two
men get to know each other, he becomes more and more suspicious of his stepfather, who
seems to have no flaw.
Spoilers ahead! You have been warned. Don’t forget to give it a thumbs up, comment on
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The movie starts as we see a middle-aged man in his bathroom completely transforming himself.
He dyes his hair, shaves his beard, and removes his brown contact lenses to reveal his blue
eyes. He has several pictures of him and his family in the house. He goes to the kitchen
and makes himself breakfast. But as he moves, we see the dead bodies of his family spread
across the house. There are several bloodied tools on the kitchen sink. The man goes outside
and drives away with his luggage.
At the salt Lake City police department, detectives discuss the murder. The suspect is the stepfather
Grady Edwards who has disappeared since the event. The police have identified a pattern
in these kinds of cases and suspect that Grady is a serial killer who targets widowed or
divorced single women with a family. He is very sly with his crimes and leaves no evidence
of his identity behind, paying in cash for everything, so they can’t track his credit
card info. There is zero information about his identity.
Grady comes across a woman named Susan Kerns Harding in a grocery store. Susan is a recently
divorced mother grocery shopping with her youngest two kids Sean and Beth. Grady introduces
himself as David Harris and charms her with his personality. He tells her that his wife
and daughter died last year in a car accident. Susan invites him for a pizza party with her
kids.
It is six months later. David and Susan are engaged. Susan’s eldest son Michael is coming
home from military school. His girlfriend Kelly picks him up from the airport. Michael
is not sure about Susan’s new fiance. Kelly opens the door to their backyard to reveal
a surprise party. All of his family are there. Susan hugs her son. Everyone is happy to have
him back. Michael finally meets David. Susan’s sisters are at the party too. David proposes
a toast. He thanks Susan, Sean, and Beth for welcoming him to the family and Michael for
completing it.
Susan’s sister Jackie offers David a job at the real estate company she works at. Susan
is pleased to get David off the roads. He accepts the offer. David then asks Michael
to meet him in the basement. David has built several cabinets there. Most of them are locked.
He opens one to reveal his collection of tequila. He wants to bond with Michael over alcohol.
David knows Michael doesn't want to go back to the military school, so he suggests joining
the high school swimming club. That way Michael could get a sports scholarship and get into
a college. But Michael declines, saying that getting into the club is impossible. They
take a shot together. After the party, Michael sees Kelly off.
Later, Susan comes to Michael’s room. She tells him to try to get along with David.
Michael, however, tells her to hold on to the lectures. The next day, David goes to
Michael’s old high school, talks to the sports teacher, and gets him into the swimming
club. Michael is very thankful. Kelly comes over later. She and Michael are swimming in
their backyard pool. Sean, on the other hand, is playing a video game at full volume. Susan
tells him to turn it down repeatedly. Finally, David goes to his room and grabs him by the
back of his neck to stop him. Sean is too scared to say anything.
Sean looks visibly sad at the dinner table. Susan asks him if something is wrong, but
he dismisses her. Susan then tells Michael about David’s wife and daughter’s death.
The doorbell rings. It’s Susan’s ex-husband Jay. Sean and Beth run to the door to greet
him. They are going to spend the weekend with their biological dad. Michael, however, doesn’t
want to meet him.
At breakfast, the next day, Susan’s neighbor, Mrs. Cutter, rings the doorbell. She has seen
a show called America's most wanted, and the sketch of a killer looked just like David.
Susan assures her that it’s not him. Michael hears this from upstairs and finds it weird.
David dismisses it. That day, Michael and David meet for lunch at a diner where he asks
him to be his best man. While talking about his family, David calls his dead daughter
two different names. He recovers, saying that her name was Lisa-Michelle, but Michael still
finds it suspicious.
Later, Mrs Cutter is at her house when she hears a doorbell. She goes to check but finds
no one outside. She goes in again when David suddenly appears behind her. He pushes her
down the basement stairs. He then suffocates her to death. Michael and Kelly are in the
pool. He tells her about David’s slip up earlier. Kelly thinks he is obsessing about
it too much. At dinner, Jay brings Sean and Beth home. He is furious as Sean told him
about David grabbing his neck the previous day. Michael restrains Jay and brings him
outside.
Jay and Michael talk for a while and bond. David apologizes to Sean, but Susan is still
mad at him. He apologizes to her too. David has started working in real estate with Jackie.
That day at work, she gives him a bunch of papers to fill in with his personal information.
When he gets back home, he tells Susan that he doesn’t like the real estate job and
wants to quit. Susan goes out with Jackie and her friend at night. Sean and Michael
are playing video games in his room. Someone rings the doorbell. David opens the door to
see it is Jay. Jay has come to apologize to him and see his kids for the last time before
flying for work.
While talking Jay reveals that he did a background check on David upon Michael’s request. He
calls out David for lying about the college he went to. Jay then accuses David of lying
on several occasions. David takes the vase in the living room and hits him on his head.
The boys do not hear the noise because of the video game. Meanwhile, at the bar, Jackie
tells Susan she finds it concerning that Susan knows nothing about his background. Susan,
however, takes offense to this and asks her to be happy for her.
At the house, David drags Jay to the basement and ties his mouth and hands with duct tape.
He puts a plastic bag over Jay’s face and suffocates him to death. While he is at it,
Michael sees the basement door open but doesn't go downstairs to check. David sends Michael
a text from Jay's phone apologizing for not coming to visit and adds that the background
check on David was successful and that he is clean.
The next day the police find Mrs. Cutter’s body. Michael overhears a conversation between
the mailman and David where the mailman tells him that she died in an accident. But when
David tells the story to Susan, he adds that she died by falling down the stairs. This
makes Michael extremely suspicious. Susan takes Sean and Beth to the dentist. David
goes up to the attic to repair its floor. Michael and Kelly are by the pool. He tells
her about David’s weird behavior this morning, but she dismisses it again.
Sometime later, David goes out to pick up Sean and Beth, but on his way, Susan calls
him to tell him she will pick them up instead. Michael and Kelly go into David’s closet
to search for something against him. When they hear him come in, they hide there. Somehow
they manage to get away before he sees them. That night, after dinner, David comes into
Michael’s room to tell him that he always wants him to be upfront. David knows that
they were snooping on his stuff. Later, Michael finds David’s sketch as Grady Edwards while
looking through the computer.
He shows it to Kelly the next day, but she still doesn’t believe it. David texts Michael
through Jay’s phone again when he finds Jackie’s voicemail. She wants to talk to
Jay about David. At the same time, Michael calls Jay. The phone starts ringing in the
basement, and Michael hears it. He sees David declining the phone through a window. He hurries
downstairs to see David talking to someone on his phone in the living area. At breakfast,
Michael takes a picture of David on his phone. Susan goes out to drop the kids at camp. Michael
comes out of the shower to find David standing in front of him. He asks Michael about his
plans for tonight. Michael replies that he is going to stay at Kelly’s.
Michael goes to his room to find it cleaned. He quickly looks through his phone to see
that the picture of David is gone. Later that night, David goes to Jackie’s and kills
her by drowning her in the pool. Susan and David are the only two people at the house.
But Michael plans to sneak into the basement to look for evidence against him. David, on
the other hand, plans to murder Susan that night. He sets out his tools and gives Susan
a pill to help her sleep better through the thunderstorm.
Michael and Kelly are in the car outside. He tells her to call him if she sees someone
wake up in the house.
He then enters the basement through the skylight. He manages to break the cabinet’s locks
and finds a bag with his father’s initials on it. David had hidden it the night he killed
Jay. Michael notices a freezer in the room and opens it. Kelly sees David’s room light
up and calls Michael. But his phone drops and breaks, so now, Kelly cannot help him.
She runs to the skylight through which Michael went in to call him. Meanwhile, Michael moves
around the ice cream in the freezer to reveal Jay’s body in a plastic bag. He retreats
and falls in shock.
David finds Kelly and punches her to the ground. He blocks the skylight window and traps Michael
in. David then drags Kelly to the kitchen and starts preparing knives and weapons for
his kill. Susan wakes up and comes to the kitchen as well. David maniacally tells her
that this is not going to work because of Michael since he is too disrespectful and
says that he thought she could be "Mrs Grady Edwards”. Susan is stunned when David grimaces
and asks, "Who am I here?" Susan calls him by his name, causing him to say, "David! I'm
David Harris!".
Just as she notices Kelly on the floor, David comes at her with a knife. She runs and hides
in the bathroom. David breaks down the door. As he is about to stab her, she stabs his
neck with a broken piece of mirror. Michael manages to break down the basement floor.
Michael, Kelly, and Susan reunite, but David comes after them again. They hurry to the
attic. Michael tries to close the doors on him, but David manages to get up there. The
attic floors are weak, so when David and Michael are fighting, Michael falls through the floor.
Kelly threatens David with an electric saw, but the floor breaks, and both Kelly and Susan
fall through it.
Michael attacks David, and both of them fall onto the roof. They struggle there for a while
and fall to the ground. They both lie unconscious there. Finally, Michael wakes up from a coma
in a hospital bed. He has been there for over a month. David, on the other hand, fled from
the scene. No one has seen him ever since.
The movie ends as we see David introduce himself as Chris Ames to a widowed woman with two
kids in a grocery store.
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