Kevin Costner is primarily associated with baseball movies and Westerns, and his tendency to pursue these roles time and time again implies that they appeal to his taste buds. That said, Costner is a versatile performer with a filmography that spans all types of genres, including horror — even if his brief forays into scare fare have been overshadowed by throwing pitches and riding horses. This brings us to 2009’s “The New Daughter,” an underseen (and underrated) chiller that is currently available to stream on Prime Video.
Based on John Connolly’s novel of the same name, “The New Daughter” tells the story of John James (Costner), a divorced single parent who moves him and his two children into a new home that just so happens to be built on an ancient burial ground. After a while, spooky occurrences start happening, leading John to believe that malevolent forces are at play. That’s the basic premise, but don’t go into “The New Daughter” expecting a standard ghost movie like the premise implies — the horror at the heart of it all is actually quite unique and monstrous.
“The New Daughter” isn’t ever going to be held up against the best horror movies of all time, but it’s a fun American Gothic creature flick with great performances by Costner and the film’s young actors, Ivana Baquero and Gattlin Griffith, both of whom have grown up to be solid performers. (Griffith even reunited with Costner for “Horizon: An American Saga” years later.) If nothing else, though, the movie deserves to be seen just to watch Costner working in a genre he isn’t a fan of.
Read more: The 50 Scariest Horror Movie Monsters Ranked
Kevin Costner has compared The New Daughter to Field of Dreams
John looking down at his hands in The New Daughter – Anchor Bay Entertainment
Kevin Costner isn’t a fan of horror movies. The actor has gone on record saying that he doesn’t like feeling scared, so why would he enjoy a genre that is hell-bent on giving viewers the willies? However, it seems that he went into “The New Daughter” looking to escape his comfort zone, and he equated the experience of working on the film to that of another supernatural movie he made, albeit not the scary kind. As Costner told Bloody-Disgusting back in 2008:
“It’s very much like ‘Field of Dreams’ in the sense that we didn’t know if we could pull off ‘Field of Dreams.’ We didn’t know if people were going to, ultimately, at the end of the day, buy people coming out of the corn, have Burt Lancaster step over that line and not be able to go back, and be moved by that.”
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“The New Daughter” being a forgotten gem suggests that it won’t ever have the same impact on movie fans that “Field of Dreams” has had, and that’s okay. However, that doesn’t mean the 2009 horror film doesn’t wield the power to make viewers suspend their disbelief in a similar way — and to become engrossed in the nightmare that befalls Costner’s character and his family.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
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