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The Stepfather

✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

United Kingdom, Canada, United States · 1987
Rated R · 1h 29m
Director Joseph Ruben
Starring Terry O'Quinn, Jill Schoelen, Shelley Hack, Charles Lanyer
Genre Horror, Thriller

A seemingly mild mannered man—who has just murdered his entire family—quickly adopts a new identity and leaves town. After building a new relationship with a widow and her teenage daughter, he struggles to hide his true identity and maintain a grip on reality.

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60

Time Out by

While O'Quinn is effectively scary, one is left longing for Hitchcock's dark, daring wit and disturbingly amoral insights.

100

Chicago Tribune by Dave Kehr

The Stepfather is a nearly perfect work of popular entertainment. A thriller about a psychopathic killer, it is absolutely terrifying. At the same time it is a highly personal work, the expression of a gifted individual. [27 Feb 1987, p.A]

75

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

The Stepfather doesn’t hold up quite as well as it did during the late 1980s (some of the film’s technical aspects are dated) but it still generates tension and suspense and O’Quinn’s performance has lost none of its power.

75

Chicago Reader by Pat Graham

This 1987 film doesn't quite leave its slasher antecedents behind, but the styling is never less than assured, and Ruben knows how to put bland, unruffled surfaces to sinister Hitchcockian uses.

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