Review of The New Daughter (2009) by Lashawn P — 15 Feb 2011

This film had a lot of potential, but never capitalized on any of it. A big part of what hamstrung this movie was the dialog--significant portions of it were delivered unconvincingly, or the lines just sounded flat-out unnatural. Still, while a lot of people seem to think of this movie as slow, I felt that it did a somewhat passable job of building up atmosphere. Some of it was awfully predictable, but at least it seemed to be leading up to something interesting...

...and then we get to the ending, which completely chucks all that out the window. A couple things happen that never really make sense, and then the credits start rolling on what feels like a weak and unresolved note. "The New Daughter" isn't terrible by any means; it's certainly better than, say, anything the SyFy channel puts out. Though I realize that's like ending a sentence with "at least you don't have syphilis"--it's not that big of a comfort. But for the possessed/evil child sub-genre, you could do worse.