This is perhaps the worse Costner film except for that Water World thing. The movie starts out great. It has a 4 to 5 star beginning. The setting is a fictional town called Mercy, South Carolina. PLOT SPOILER: It is based on Bishopville, home of the infamous Lizard Man. After Costner gets the boot from his wife, he moves into a fine southern plantation home with his snotty teenage daughter and normal son. The daughter becomes obsessed with an old Indian burial mound in their back yard (funny that the state hasn't declared it an archaeological treasure and put a fence around it). The house has a strange "history," but only the black people in town seem to know it. Louisa, played by Ivana Baquero, does an excellent job as the moody teen girl. It reminded me of the teen girl in Uncle Buck. You just want to smack her. The plot is predictable, which isn't all bad, after all we knew how The Passion was going to end and we went to see it. Rate this one low on your Netflix list.

This movie ends stupidly and nihilistic, I guess to give it that digimodern "edge" everybody seems to think is so cool these days. Sorry I watched it. A cross between The Descent and The Haunted Mansion with some slasher thrown in for effect. Far too many characters are introduced and then not developed, and why is half of the cast from Scooby-Doo doing a cameo near the end of the film? Velma is as insistent and talkative as ever, and it looks like Shaggy finally went and got his doctorate in the paranormal. Redeeming value? No sex scenes, which are always gratuitous. So, the plot? A pre-human race of lamprey-mouthed bipedal cave dwellers need to survive so they rape Costner's daughter (we find her in the tub after the fact--and we see her blood streaming down the drain) and transform her into their queen ant. And where do they live? Beneath the local Indian burial mound, of course. You know, just stop making films if you don't know how. And Kevin--really? You need to redeem yourself with another Dances With Wolves. Not that you helped your career with that godawful version of Robin Hood, but we'll try to forget that one.

A-Z Horror Movie of the Day..."The New Daughter" (PG-13 - 2009 - US)Sub-Genre: Monster/ParanormalMy Score: 6.6Cast=6 Acting=8 Plot=8 Ending=4 Story=7 Scare=7 Jump=5 F/X=8 Monster=7 Creep=6A single father moves his two children to rural South Carolina, only to watch his daughter exhibit increasingly strange behavior. How Far Will A Father Go To Protect The Ones He Loves? Apparently all the way to the end of the movie...haha. You know, I liked this more than I thought I would...Kevin Costner and the girl from "Pan's Labyrinth" I mean c'mon! But the son was amazing (Gattlin Griffith)...his acting stole the show for me. I was on the edge of my seat all the way through...then the ending left a bad taste in my mouth. It's not your typical Hollywood ending; which is great...I just wanted more closure. All things considered, I think this is worth watching.

After moving to a new house, a man slowly starts to accept his young daughter's change-in-behavior in the cause of a curse connecting the strange Indian burial mound in the area and tries to free her of the danger.This is a rather enjoyable offering though it tends to fall more in line with a thriller than an actual horror film. The fact that the entire premise is unraveled so slowly due to none of the actions taken resulting in generating any actual scares but rather just the fact that something weird is happening in the first place, there's not a lot going on here that actively makes what goes on here creepy. Rather, these early scenes are all based on the general concept on her slowly getting possessed and in general just acting off from her usual behavior but never actually doing anything remotely scary or chilling while doing so, resulting in the majority of these scenes having her run away upset over the justified questioning of what's happening as if doing so is the greatest threat to her privacy she's ever faced. The slow integration with the history and presence of the Indian mound and it's influences shift this back somewhat into a more horror-filled storyline with the true nature of the possession finally coming into focus and taking the scenes from then on in the story into a more chilling phase which really highlights the rest of the movie quite well. The assault on the house, full of barricades, blocked furniture and more, makes for a great action scene and the final journey into the deepest parts of the mound do serve as some immeasurably chilling works that truly feel as though the entire purpose was to creep out from the start such is the effectiveness of these scenes. The central premise about the father's quest to protect is quite well-handled moreso as an after-thought once the full effect of what's going on is handled here since it really doesn't work when playing through but serves quite well when combined with the later information gleamed which really makes it quite enjoyable and furthers this one quite nicely. The main influence being a thriller more than horror film does hurt this one somewhat, but it's still an enjoyable and watchable effort.Rated R: Language, Violence and children-in-jeopardy.