Suspense in: The Stepfather

In class we watched The Stepfather, a remake of the original version released in 1987. This film had no special effects and based purely on the element of suspense had us on the edge of our seats. I'll give you three major scenes where the suspense was literally oozing out of the screen. I have to admit, they were my favourites too.

The first suspense filled scene is when David (the dad) doesnt like Mrs Cutter (the neighbour) being suspicious of him, so he goes to kill her. He sneaks into her house and we all know he's in there and it's only a matter of time till she finds him. She walks to her death. Quite sad really. But she follows one of her cats to the closet and gives her a mean purr (if thats possible) and with quick cuts between shots David is suddenly not in closet as we suspected but standing behind her and we all jump out of our seats. The sheer speed of her death shocks us into oblivion because this is the first time we see him actually kill someone. Scary.

The second scene I thought was full of suspence was not a death scene. Your probably thinking 'what??' but when Michael and David go out to eat lunch and David talks about his daughter and calls her by the wrong name. I thought there was plenty of suspense there because in previous scenes, Michael is already suspicious of David and is weary of him. And this teensy weensy little mistake just made it worse.

The third and final scene was the one that literally made me jump and have a mini heart attack. This was when Michael and David are fighting on the roof and David slips off the edge. I was kind of expecting him to be there, as this is something that is common is most thriller films. But I didn't see him, and for a split second I thought that he had actually fallen and died. And in that split second was when the director decided to cut from the empty place to Michaels' face and back to the empty edge where David suddenly pops out. That scared the hell out of me. But it was genius.

Overall, the movie was quite quick and jumped from shot to shot, which was something that worked as an advantage. I really liked this movie. Even though I was scared out of my wits for half of it.