STEPHANIE (2017)

Studio:       Blumhouse
Director:    Akiva Goldsman
Writer:       Ben Collins, Luke Piotrowski
Producer:  Jason Blum, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Adrienne Biddle, Matt Kaplan
Stars:     Shree Crooks, Frank Grillo, Anna Torv, Jonah Beres, Lasaundra Gibson, Samantha Smith

Review Score:

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Summary:

An orphaned child harboring an extraordinary ability hides in an empty house surrounded by an unseen monster.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

America 2027 – In the wake of a global epidemic that has survivors sheltering from unseen monsters, a research team captures unidentified transgressors for processing. Two scientists extract a memory from one of the subjects and watch her story unfold on a video monitor.

Stephanie lives alone in her family’s former home with her pet rabbit Mr. Hoppy and stuffed animal Francis. Stephanie goes about everyday activities, reading stories to herself and preparing smoothies, as well as hiding from an unseen monster stalking somewhere outside.

Stephanie experiences a haunting vision of her dead brother Paul. She then goes to her brother’s bedroom and holds the hand of Paul’s corpse. Stephanie apologizes for an incident involving a pumpkin and mentions that the monster has returned.

Stephanie finds her rabbit lying dead on a table and hides under the sheets. She also has a vision of a haunting hooded figure.

Stephanie’s parents Jane and Eric unexpectedly return home. Stephanie notices strange marks on Jane’s stomach before asking her parents why they took Paul away. Stephanie cryptically confronts her parents with an insinuation that they abandoned her to be killed by the monster, and expected her to be dead when they returned.

Eric begins building a wall outside. Jane has a video chat during which she dodges questions about Paul and Stephanie’s wellbeing.

When Stephanie asks questions about the monster and what it wants, Eric tells her that the monster is summoned when people have negative feelings. Stephanie asks why her parents left her alone in the house and Eric says that they fled out of fear.

Stephanie overhears her parents speaking cryptically. Later that night she is woken from a dream of Eric holding a shovel.

Stephanie confronts her father with the astonishing claim that she thought the monster killed him. Eric is suddenly pulled into the basement by an unseen force. Stephanie and her mother hide together until the force pulls Jane away too.

Stephanie flees to her treehouse. Her parents follow while the ground violently erupts.

Jane and Eric tell Stephanie that she is sick and they need her memory of her brother Paul to make Stephanie well. At her father’s prompting, Stephanie remembers a morning when she was carving pumpkins with her brother. Stephanie suddenly used uncontrollable telekinetic powers that killed Paul and forced her parents from the house.

Stephanie’s eyes turn black and she begins entering a trance. Jane sedates her quickly. As Jane and Eric prepare to drill into Stephanie’s neck, glass suddenly explodes everywhere.

With the news reporting that euthanasia may be the only cure, Jane and Eric prepare a poison for Stephanie in a drugged drink. After Jane says goodbye, Eric escorts Stephanie outside, where Stephanie remembers that she is responsible for giving her father his scar, although she doesn’t know why or how.

The poisoned drink jumps from Stephanie’s hand. Eric draws a gun when Stephanie begins transforming. Stephanie tries to tell her father that she can control her power, but he shoots her as her ability begins manifesting.

Eric returns to Jane. Stephanie resurrects and comes back to the house. Stephanie begins to seemingly morph into a monster before attacking both parents, using her telekinetic powers to twist their bodies and kill them.

The house crumbles as Stephanie exits. Stephanie psychically drags the bodies of her parents behind her and takes them to Paul’s grave.

The scientists watching this memory realize that Stephanie voluntarily surrendered. Now recognizing that Stephanie actually fed off of love and not negative emotions as originally believed, the scientists race to the children’s holding area as the facility goes into lockdown. Meanwhile, Stephanie tells the other child subjects that she loves them. Their eyes turn black and they begin manifesting powers of their own.

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NOTE: Since the Overlook Film Fest in 2017, "Stephanie" was recut for its 2018 home video release to exclude the sci-fi bookends referenced in this review.

Review:

Producer Jason Blum and filmmaker Akiva Goldsman premiered their creepy kid chiller “Stephanie” at the 2017 Overlook Film Festival.  Following the pair’s post-screening Q&A, the loudest chatter online and in the lobby involved a reveal that the duo would reteam for a new adaptation of Stephen King’s “Firestarter.”

That’s a relevant note because it partially explains why “Stephanie” feels like a trial run for a much better telekinetic thriller with far greater scope.  It also speaks volumes about “Stephanie’s” limp impact in that the audience immediately moved on, interested more in digesting a morsel of news about what might be next instead of the meal of the movie just eaten.

Clearly envisioned at one time to be a more complicated movie than what the festival cut became, the film’s whittled-down form shapes it as a routine haunted horror story.  Yet The Powers That Be couldn’t bring themselves to completely strip the bookending narrative.  So “Stephanie” is uncomfortably stuck inside a sci-fi sandwich framing device its simplicity immediately outgrows having any practical use for.

Opening scenes introduce 2027 America.  An unspecified epidemic has quarantined survivors hiding in homes from unseen monsters.  Harold Perrineau and Kenneth Choi are thrown away in a one-and-done scene as their characters, credited as ‘Leader’ and ‘Technician’ as if to emphasize their irrelevance, stalk about in search of subjects who are taken to a research facility.  There, memories are extracted to learn more about what is contributing to the unknown crisis and how it can be controlled.

File all of this away somewhere unimportant.  None of the above comes into directly significant play until the epilogue.  Someone just thought it mattered that we see two random scientists, not even Perrineau or Choi, watching Stephanie’s story on a video screen before getting into her tale for ourselves.

Stephanie is an apparent orphan living alone in her family’s house in the wake of this mystery situation that has invisible forces lurking around outside.  Instead of mass panic or crumbling landscapes, “Stephanie” starts on only this one person, making the film’s first half a narrow POV look behind the curtain of a catastrophe.

This kind of quiet introduction works to better effect in traditional apocalyptic scenarios, where decaying environments are established or we see how society has adapted to new modes of survival.  Here, we see Stephanie talking to her favorite stuffed animal, brushing her teeth with too much toothpaste, and reading herself a bedtime story since there is no one else around.  It’s a long drag of watching a young girl play ordinary make believe, waiting for the first act to offer some incentive for getting invested in the unexplained mystery at large.

Stephanie the character gets little help in the engagement department from young Shree Crooks, who in turn gets little help from too many flatly scripted scenes of mundane moments.  Thinking back on star turns from child actors like Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense” or Kirsten Dunst in “Interview with the Vampire,” Crooks isn’t operating at a high enough level of charm to drive a single protagonist scenario by herself.

Eventually, the plot slow rolls into standard alone in the house supernatural suspense.  It shouldn’t be a spoiler to mention that Stephanie’s parents make an unexpected return from wherever it is they went.  “Stephanie” then adds a layer of “what’s really going on?” paranoia through cryptic whispers and more breadcrumb reveals of the larger world hinted at in the opening.

But Akiva Goldsman can’t find a way to deliver a silent scare of atmospheric dread.  Every uninventive fright comes courtesy of a quick volume knob turn, never natural atmosphere.  When tension is built, it comes with small stakes of wondering whether or not Stephanie is going to cut her foot on broken glass or some other household danger.  “Stephanie” is so insular and expands so gradually that interest in wherever it is going can’t help but evaporate along the way.

The movie’s major mistake is teasing the notion that a more creative cut exists somewhere in material we are not allowed to see.  It was instead decided to shred the setup to ribbons and deliver a generic, minimalistic thriller, likely with the mindset of having an easier to explain marketing angle.

As this review is based on the debut screening, one hopes the filmmakers reconsider another trip to the editing bay before releasing the film to the wild.  Someone with sway needs either the guts to fully restore the surrounding story, or the sense to accept it is a distraction demanding to be excised entirely.  Either option would be a coherence and quality improvement.

Review Score:  40

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