Parents' Guide to Stepfather

Camp works best when the movie knows it's camp, and Stepfather certainly does. It tosses off dad jokes from a man we already know is a serial family killer, never bothering to give Darnell a redemption arc or even a flicker of hidden decency since we already know exactly what he wants from the start. That makes the whole thing fun to watch: a villain who never pretends to be anything else.

Diggs is clearly having a blast, shifting between Darnell's various personalities without chasing the kind of prestige performance Joanne Woodward gave decades ago in The Three Faces of Eve. Instead he leans all the way into camp, playing a man who is funny, charming, and unmistakably evil, and who never lets us forget how far gone he really is. A scene where he trades cheesy jokes with his stepdaughter's boyfriend works as a small comic moment right up until it turns dark. The film's nod to mental health never tries to be more important than it needs to be, and somehow that works in its favor. None of this makes Stepfather an objectively good movie by any real measure, but for parents looking for something silly, and willing to bring along teenagers old enough for it, the guilty pleasure here is honestly earned.