New Daughter

"...elegantly crafted...  Brian Orndorf, DVDTalk.com
"...a creepier, more sophisticated movie...  Ethan Gilsdorf, The Boston Globe

Editor's Note The imaginative world of author John Connolly (THE BOOK OF LOST THINGS) comes alive in this haunting adaptation of one of his short stories. Kevin Costner (MR. BROOKS) stars as a father who begins to worry when his young daughter (Ivana Baquero, PAN'S LABYRINTH) doesn't seem like herself, and he looks to the burial mound near their new home for answers.

	Kevin Costner
	Ivana Baquero
	John Connolly - Source Writer
	Paul Brooks - Producer
	Scott Niemeyer - Executive Producer
	John Travis - Screenwriter
	Norm Waitt - Executive Producer
	Luis A. Berdejo - Director

Variety
"Here, Berdejo displays a fantastic flair for locked-down shot composition and framing..." 12/27/2009

Variety 5 of 10
A onetime New Line property unceremoniously dumped into limited release, Luis Alejandro Berdejo's supernatural thriller "The New Daughter" is nowhere near as bad as its invisible marketing strategy might suggest. But that's not to imply that it's worth seeking out. Kevin Costner starrer boasts an impressive English-language debut from Spanish teenager Ivana Baquero ("Pan's Labyrinth") and a well-constructed first half, but its many cliches begin to undo its spell long before a ridiculous third act squanders all remaining goodwill. Business will likely be extremely slow, as only hardcore horrorphiles seem to know the film even exists...While the vogue for moody, Japanese-inspired horror seems to have largely subsided, "The New Daughter" shows that the genre can still be an excellent proving ground for young filmmakers to hone their technical chops. Here, Berdejo displays a fantastic flair for locked-down shot composition and framing (the photography and production design are both of an unexpectedly high caliber), though he's overly reliant on jarring jump cuts and sound effects to conjure tension...Though the premise couldn't be more hackneyed, many of these early scenes are impressively mounted, and at times the film even gestures toward some seriously interesting psychosexual subtext. Yet it all collapses in the third act, as John is made to run an obstacle course of plot contrivances that prevent him from simply moving his family to one of the Eastern seaboard's plentiful unhaunted houses. Eventually, the ominous woodland creatures move up into the foreground, and they do not benefit from the exposure...Rated PG-13, "The New Daughter" is largely bloodless and totally boobless, though it nonetheless contains a horrific offscreen death, a mutilated cat, nearly constant sequences of young children in danger, and a truly appalling final shot that would have certainly prompted fresh scrutiny of the MPAA's sanity had the film obtained a wider release. - Andrew Barker