Movie Review: Stephanie

Kind of like Cargo‘s fate, the horror movie Stephanie has sat in my Netflix queue a while. And like I did when I finally watched Cargo, I started Stephanie because I was in Queue Cleanup Mode.

This weekend I finally decided to give it a shot. (After I had given a couple other movies that shall remain nameless a shot, but deleted them after less than 10 minutes.)

Would Stephanie meet the same swift axe?

I Queued It Why?

Who knows why I first saved it in my list. Had someone recommended it? Had Netflix recommended it? Had it been trending?

It’s a mystery why it first caught my eye. It’s less a mystery why I took so long to watch it. The summary didn’t exactly make my heart race.

A menacing, unseen force stalks a young girl living by herself in a suburban house, where she’s surrounded by reminders of her once-happy family.

Nor did it’s cover-image. (Which I couldn’t find to download so pardon the shot I took of it on the TV with my phone.)

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I hadn’t noticed the “Creature Features” genre listing until after I finished watching it. That might’ve sparked my curiosity quicker.

The little information my brain did have assumed it was a supernatural horror about a ghost. Likely a lonely little ghost girl. (Judging from the photo, perhaps one from the 1800s who had died barefoot.)

I wasn’t sure how scary a movie about a little barefoot ghost girl haunting an empty house could be, so I put it off.

However, Stephanie was as far from the movie I assumed it was as it could be.

Maybe if I’d read the description IMDB had for it, which differs slightly from Netflix’s, I might have watched sooner:

After a mysterious global crisis, a young girl is left alone to hide from a malevolent power that stalks her home. Her parents eventually return and the struggle begins to save their daughter.

Like I mentioned in my review of The Domestics (and maybe some other movies), I’m a sucker for apocalyptic/end-of-the-world movies. “Global crisis” would’ve piqued my interest more.

Still, once I finally started watching, Stephanie held my interest to the end.

Where are this girl’s parents?

As the movie started out, I couldn’t help but wonder “Why is this little girl all alone?” and “What happened to her parents?”

I kept thinking it was going to turn out that it was kind of an The Others scenario. (Because I still had it in my mind this was a supernatural movie, not a creature feature.)

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

SPOILER ALERT

Click here to skip ahead to the “Rating” part if you don’t want to read any spoilers.

I also figured her parents had split for good. Or were taken. Or were dead.

Nope. They come back into the picture, and at first I’m like, “What in the hell? Why would they leave? And why would they not be more apologetic about leaving her upon their return? Why are they back? Where did they go? This is whacked!”

So. Many. Questions.

Of course most of them eventually get answered –except why the dad was building a fence against a monster that dwelled within. That was a head scratcher.

Especially once it’s finally revealed that Stephanie is the monster –or at least has been infected by one.

Another thing that perplexed me was how did the door open when she was under her fort? Was that actually her, or one of the other monsters? Were they external beings too? I wasn’t clear on that.

Still, the questions about why her parents had left her propelled the storyline, and that’s what held my interest. I had to keep watching to see the explanation.

Rating

Stephanie surprised me. I liked it. I didn’t love it. Mainly because some questions weren’t answered –like that fence. (If you skipped here after the spoiler alert notice, never mind.)

But I did find myself wrapped up in the plot.

And the acting was great. Shree Crooks as the title character is amazing. If they remake Firestarter, they need to cast her! Or ET for that matter. She’s in the same league as Drew Barrymore or Dakota Fanning.

I knew I recognized Frank Grillo, but not from what. He always does a good job, and he was such an endearing dad in this movie.

And I was psyched to see Anna Torv as the mom. I loved her on Fringe, and it wasn’t until I was doing my IMDB research on this movie that I realized she was also in Netflix’s Mindhunter. No wonder I liked her in that. She’s a fabulous actress.

It’s an extremely small cast, but the casting was perfect. All the actors nailed their performances.

And, like I mentioned above, the storyline sucked me in. Overall it was an enjoyable movie, but because there were a few plot holes, I’m only giving it three skulls.