Okay sequel to the underrated original slasher/thriller about a demented serial killer, an excellent Terry O'Quinn, seeking the perfect all-American family and then slaughtering them when they don't live up to his white picket fence expectation. This sequel picks up from the end of the first film with O'Quinn escaping from an insane asylum, assuming a new identify, and finding a new family to be a loving stepfather. Jonathan Brandis, the son of O'Quinn's new wife, Meg Foster, begins to suspect something is wrong with his new stepdad and the white picket fences begin to crumble. The main weakness of this sequel is that the original film was told from the perspective of the teen daughter and tension built around her slowly coming to the realization that her new stepfather is not who he says he is. It wasn't a mystery in the original film that O'Quinn was a killer, but it was the suspenseful game of cat-and-mouse between stepfather and daughter that made the film interesting, as well as O'Quinn's dynamite performance. Where this sequel goes wrong is that O'Quinn is now the main character, which jettisons the film's cat-and-mouse suspense, and also causes film fall into standard slasher film conventions, losing the originality of the first film. O'Quinn is still excellent, but overall, "Stepfather II" is a so-so horror/slasher film that's nowhere as good as the highly original first film.
Review of Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy
