The Stepfather (Joseph Ruben, 1987)

 Jerry Blake (Terry O'Quinn) just wants a nice, quiet all-American family. And he is willing to kill for it.

Joseph Ruben occupies a weird niche in my brain. I would not rank him as the second coming of Hitchcock, but there is a chilly banality to his films that has stuck with me since childhood. It might have something to do with the subject matter: Sleeping with the Enemy deals with spousal abuse; The Good Son with an evil child. 

They also take place in suburbia, in generally cold climates - as someone who grew up in cold suburbs, his films always struck a cord.

The Stepfather is the progenitor of these later films - like them, it is based around undermining a familiar image of the WASP American family, only in this case that theme is expressed more overtly through the title character.

Jerry Blake is a perverse caricature of 80s Americana. Obsessed with images of TV domestic bliss from the fifties, he is determined to replicate an extreme version of the nuclear family. 

Jerry's introduction ranks as one of the best horror sequences I have seen, and kind of overshadows the rest of the movie:

In a bathroom, a blood-splattered Jerry cleans himself up and transforms himself into his new persona. Picking up his bags, he leaves the bathroom and descends the stairs toward the front entrance. The sound of a phone off the hook gradually builds as Jerry passes bloody walls and the bodies of his previous family crumpled in the living room. 

Leaving the house, he walks cheerily down the street while whistling.

It is a terrifying sequence and has such an impact that it took a few viewings for me to notice how long it was until the next scene of violence.

This is a perfect set up for suspense, as we follow Jerry's new stepdaughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen), as she wrestles with Jerry's intense attempts to build a relationship with her. It is a testament to the movie that its most suspenseful moments come down to human interactions, rather than bloodletting. A lot of the suspense is based on whether Jerry can keep up appearances. Presentation is the character's central motivation, and when anything disrupts that - like his stepdaughter getting expelled, or kissing a boy - you know it is only a matter of time before Jerry will want a clean slate.

If it were not for Terry O'Quinn's performance, this movie might have come off as silly. There are multiple elements which work against it - the score is very synth-heavy, and feels more appropriate to a slasher movie; the supporting actors are mostly wooden; and the movie's plot feels too cookie-cutter, barring the characters from fully developing, or acting in ways contrary to their personalities.The third act is also a misfire - it feels more like the final chase from a slasher movie, including the cliche of having Stephanie in the shower. 

When the movie is just focused on O'Quinn, The Stepfather comes to life as a bizarre satire of Reagan-era America. 

O'Quinn has the bearing of a TV dad from a sitcom, but with those big, piercing eyes and easy smile, he puts you on edge. There are so many scenes which just come down to his performance - not just as the character, but as the benevolent patriarch Jerry is trying to be.

While the movie's plot veers toward the climax on fast tracks, the real story is tracking this evil man's thought process, as he gradually loses interest in his current family. In one of the film's most disquieting sequences, Jerry glumly walks through his neighbourhood after another argument with his family. Jerry watches a man return home and embrace his wife and child. Jerry becomes transfixed with the image of the happy family, and smiles. Never has a look of hope carried such threat.

There is a timeless quality to Jerry's twisted belief system that keeps me coming back to The Stepfather. Since it is set in the eighties, it is easy to point at the specific reference points for the film's critique of the decade's focus on family values. Jerry's nostalgia for a time that never existed feels very contemporary - he is basically enacting his own version of making America Great Again, trying to embody a version of white masculinity that only existed on his TV screen. 

The character's obsession with manners and appearance can be seen as an indictment in itself - while it stretches credibility to an extent, the fact that Jerry has been able to do this for a while, and ingratiate himself so completely speaks to how much this society emphasises superficial attributes like politeness and a tidy appearance. It might be the scariest part of the movie.

Definitely worth checking out.

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