The New Daughter (2009)

Directed by: Luis Berdejo | 108 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Kevin Costner, Ivana Baquero, Samantha Mathis, Gattlin Griffith, Erik Palladino, Noah Taylor, James Gammon, Sandra Ellis Lafferty, Margaret Anne Florence, Christopher Harvey, Brynn Massey, Martin Thompson, Nevaina Graves Rhodes, Rob Bonz, James Middleton, Ralph LaCorte, Guy Perry, Edmund Entin, Gary Entin

It’s not going well for writer John James. His wife has run off with a new love, his son Sam has separation anxiety, his daughter Louisa is rebellious and his new book has not yet been written. According to good film practice, John moves with his family to a remote place to start a new life there. Unfortunately, the move does not bring about the desired turnaround. On the contrary, things are rapidly going downhill, courtesy of a Native American burial mound in the backyard. Daughter is immediately attracted to the construction, while father and son get the creeps. The accompanying music suggests that father and son are right. Something is wrong with this heap of earth. Yet John initially blames his daughter’s increasingly strange behavior on adolescent troubles and on himself. After all, all teenage girls turn into monsters when the hormones kick in. And isn’t he himself terribly lacking as a single parent?

If director Luis Berdejo had dosed the suspense better and given his main characters a little more color, ‘The New Daughter’ would have been a decent thriller. A film that draws parallels between the vagaries of puberty and supernatural powers that take possession of you offers perspectives, but for a successful elaboration of the concept it is necessary that you empathize with the James family. Berdejo cannot achieve the latter in ‘The New Daughter’, no matter how much attention he pays to the family dynamics. Father John is a stiff rake, son Sam has a high irritation value and daughter Louisa looks so sullen from the start that you can see her disappear with love in a burial mound. In addition, Berdejo initially reveals too much about what is hiding in the hill, only to devote so much time to building up tension that you are startled awake at the rare moments when there is really something to shudder. The film music, meanwhile, keeps on insisting that you are watching a very scary movie. Nice try, but it really isn’t.

As the film nears its conclusion, the mythology surrounding the hill gets more muddled. To keep his audience focused, Berdejo has a professor show up and explain the background to Native American burial mounds to John. It’s called Infodump, a not very elegant and in this case also ill-timed attempt to create clarity. Thanks to Sam, who often works with an ant box for plot reasons, we already know that burial mounds are actually a kind of insect colonies. And with that you know enough. In fact, the similarities between ant box and burial mound are so obvious that it soon becomes clear what plans the hill dwellers have with Louisa. Such ostentatious tricks are often featured in ‘The New Daughter’. Berdejo is so eager to grab his audience that he misses the mark and comes across as much more pretentious than undoubtedly intended. The question is therefore what will you lose first as a moviegoer: your patience or your interest.