Kevin Costner in a horror film, yes that’s right… and you want to know what? It works! Originally when I first heard about The New Daughter I was pretty skeptical, okay.. scratch that– very skeptical. The cover of the DVD case looked like some campy B-movie that Costner decided to do for some extra cash. I was pleasantly surprised though and ended up being glad I chose to watch it. Sure, the movie’s not perfect by any means, but it does have a creepy feel to it and succeeds at giving the viewers a good scare.
The plot centers around a father John(Kevin Costner), his teenage daughter Louisa (Ivana Baquero) and his young son Sam (Gattlin Griffith) moving to a rural country house from the city. The family has it’s typical drama– John’s wife cheated on him and left the family behind. The daughter Louisa blames her father for her mother cheating and is very unhappy with their move to the middle of nowhere.
Upon exploring their new humble abode and it’s vast backyard, Louisa and Sam stumble upon a very large, out of place mound of land at the edge of the woods. Sam is rather taken aback by their finding at first, but Louisa seemed drawn to it. In the days to come, Louisa’s behavior greatly changes and she becomes angry and weird toward school and her family. John begins looking into his daughter’s odd behavior when he comes to realize that the mound is the cause of the problem.
John researches the history of the house and comes to find out that the mound is actually an Indian burial ground. Soon, everything begins to make sense as John looks more into the rituals of the burial grounds and any creatures that may inhabit them. However, time may not be on his side as Louisa’s condition worsens and a body-count starts to arise.
The movie definitely can be defined as a slow burner, and may not be for everyone… However, it did feature some intense, and scary moments throughout the film though. Some of the acting left room for improvement but I was willing to look beyond that. I would like to keep this a spoiler free review so I will not go over the ending but will say this– it was frickin’ creepy. It gave me goosebumps. And at the very last second, there’s a chilling twist thrown into the mix.
All in all, I would give this movie a 4/5 and would recommend it to anyone looking for a different kind of story. And it needs to be watched how any horror movie should be watched– with the lights off, the sun down and with an open mind.
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