Despite suffering a dip in fortunes during the early part of the 21st Century, Kevin Costner is now firmly back among Hollywood’s good graces, with the massive success of cultural phenomenon Yellowstone serving as the catalyst. He did suffer through some lean years, though, and you could make the argument that 2009’s The New Daughter served as the lowest of lows.
While it definitely isn’t the worst movie the two-time Academy Award winner and three-time Golden Globe victor has ever appeared in – not when such disasters as The Postman continue to exist – it marks the one and only time Costner has ever dipped his toes into the waters of horror, and it’s pretty easy to see why he hasn’t been convinced to do it again ever since.
The actor and filmmaker stars as a single father who finds himself confused and a little bit unnerved by his daughter’s strange behavior after he moves his family into a secluded home in the middle of the woods, only to discover the reasons are buried underneath when it transpires his new abode is perilously perched on top of a Native American burial mound.
Yep, it’s the long-held horror cliche come to life and used as the basis for an entire film, one that ended up sinking without a trace in the face of a critical drubbing. Even now, The New Daughter only holds Rotten Tomatoes scores of 33 and 24 percent, but maybe the curiosity factor of Costner doing horror is what’s propelled it back into the streaming limelight.
Per FlixPatrol, the dismal tale of supernatural woe has become one of the most-watched titles on Prime Video this weekend, and it’ll always be there as a bizarre asterisk on Costner’s filmography should he never return to horror ever again