Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The New Daughter Movie Review 142



The New Daughter is a thriller starring Kevin Costner and Ivana Baquero and Samantha Mathis. It is directed by Luis Berdejo. It is based on a short story by novelist John Connolly.

John James(Costner) is a writer and father to two children, Louisa(Baquero) and son Sam. He has moved with them to a huge house in the country. Louisa is a typical bitchy teenager and she is not happy. She is out exploring one day when she comes upon a huge burial mound thing and she becomes fixated with it. That night, there is some weird creature on her roof, but she doesn't see it. It becomes obvious that there is something weird going on with the place and Louisa begins to be drawn to the mound. She and Sam try to fit in in their new surroundings. John is horrified to find his son playing with a loaded shotgun which he found in the house. John gets rid of it, but he is uneasy. He meets teacher Cassandra(Mathis) and she likes him. 

Meanwhile, Louisa begins to sleepwalk and she is going out to the mound. It is having a huge influence on her and she is really becoming withdrawn and weird. John investigates about the previous owner of the house and he finds out that the previous owner left her daughter locked in a room in the house and disappeared. The girl's dad came and took her out of the house but she died in a mysterious house fire later.John is worried that there is something evil after his daughter and he warns her not to go near the mound. He leaves the kids with a babysitter and he goes to find out about the previous owner's daughter. He meets the girl's grandad and he tells John that his granddaughter changed when she was living in that house, just like Louisa. The mound has something to do with it. John decides to destroy the mound. 


John tells some scientists about the mound and they want to see it. When they arrive, they see him preparing to destroy it and they plead with him not to because it is important to them. They tell him that his daughter is being possessed or something like that and she is being used by the creatures who live in the mound to help them survive. The creatures are attacking and while the cops take John down to the station when the body of the babysitter turns up, Cassandra and the kids are alone in the house while the creatures stalk them. Cassandra meets a sticky end. The creatures take Louisa and John has to go after her.... 


I won't spoil the ending but this movie was okay. It wasn't anything amazing but it is worth a watch. It is good to see Kevin Costner in something again and he was pretty good in this. The movie gets a 5/10


2 comments:

Pinko said...

I liked the ending and I agree, it's nice to see Costner do something ... and something different. He'd never done horror before. I wasn't exactly scared, but I enjoyed it throughout if only because I thought he was very credible as a single dad and I liked the interplay between him and his daughter.

Amanda said...

Yes, I know what you mean. The movie itself was not scary as such, but there was good tension throughout and it was interesting for a straight to DVD release.

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