Screen Gems

Dylan Walsh stars.

David Harris is the kind of guy who murders his family and then casually fixes a piece of toast on the way out of the house.

That's what we learn in the first few minutes of "The Stepfather," a remake of the 1987 thriller of the same title.

Dylan Walsh plays David, the Father-Knows-Best from hell. David is a sociopath in search of a Norman Rockwell family and when the kids act up, he just kills everybody and moves on to the next set of victims.

His current target is the Harding family. Susan (Sela Ward) is a divorced mother of three, raising the two youngest while big brother is off at military school. Before she can load the groceries into the car at the local supermarket, David sweeps her off her feet with his good humor and bogus tragic back story.

By the time son Michael is home for the summer from military school, David has moved into the house and wedding bells are about to ring. Everybody's crazy about David but Michael (Penn Badgley) is skeptical. Though he's estranged from his real father (Jon Tenney), father and son share a distrust of the new man of the house.

David puts up a good front but the facade begins to crack occasionally under the pressure of maintaining his deception. Michael begins to snoop around with his reluctant girlfriend in tow. She's a baby doll played by Amber Heard who gets to wander around in skimpy clothing a lot.

Though this edition doesn't capture the overwhelming dread of the original -- largely due to a creepy performance from Terry O'Quinn -- it's not a total wash-out. The performances are solid and director Nelson McCormick ("Prom Night") throws in some chills with a minimum of gore.

The character of Susan suffers the most, however. She's the epitome of a desperate housewife. She doesn't know who her new man works for, she seems oblivious to the details of his past and she's defensive when anyone challenges his stories. When it comes to Mr. Wonderful, a mother's instincts fall down on the job.

Walsh turns in a believable performance: regular guy on the surface, monster underneath. Badgley captures the angst and rebellion of a teen who resents both his father and the suspicious replacement.

This kind of a scenario about a serial killer embedded in a home that's slowly beginning to become aware is a servicable vehicle for suspense that evokes Alfred Hitchcock's 1943 "Shadow of a Doubt."

However, this remake doesn't improve on the original; it just borrows from it.