The cruel irony of Kevin Costner’s one and only horror movie: “I wanted to torture him”
Although he’s enjoyed a stellar run in Hollywood that’s lasted decades and enjoyed as much success as any bankable leading man would hope to achieve at the apex of their career, would Kevin Costner have been an even bigger deal had he not been so insistent on spending so much of his own money?
It’s an interesting question, not to mention a complicated one. The first time the actor and filmmaker dipped his hand into his pocket to plough millions into one of his productions, the end result was Dances with Wolves, which won him a pair of Academy Awards and became the highest-grossing western ever.
Unfortunately, lightning didn’t strike twice. Or a third time. Or a fourth. Or a fifth. Or sixth, for that matter. Waterworld eventually turned a profit through TV syndication and various tie-ins, so he kind of got away with that. However, The Postman banished him from the mainstream for almost two decades, and deserved every single Razzie that it won.
Undeterred, Costner once more returned to his accountant to stump up the cash to fund the drama Swing Vote and Black or White, neither of which saw him recoup much, if any, of his multi-million dollar investment. Then there’s Horizon, which is more of An American Debacle than An American Saga, with the second of the planned four films trapped in purgatory as the chances of the final two being made diminish.
Thanks to his insatiable desire to fritter away vast amounts of his personal wealth, Costner’s professional life was at its lowest ebb in the late 2000s. As a result, he agreed to star in his first, and so far only, horror movie: Luis Berdejo’s supernatural chiller, The New Daughter. On paper, the combination of a big name and the director of Rec had potential, but none of it was realised onscreen.
In an interview with Screen Anarchy, the director was thrilled at working with someone of Costner’s magnitude. “I just told him that I would be nervous for two or three days but that I was the happiest man on earth for sharing that experience with him,” he said. “And I wanted to torture him as much as I could.”
Prophetic words, albeit not in the context the filmmaker had imagined. Costner’s solitary horror flick runs through a laughable number of cliches. Divorced? Check. Writer? Check. Father of young children? Check. Relocates to an ominous house to rebuild their lives? Check. Strange noises nobody believes at first? Check. An evil entity that lived in the abode long before the James family? Check.
Rarely has an actor looked less interested in anything than Costner in The New Daughter, with the actor sleepwalking his way through the leading role in a more convincing manner than his onscreen daughter, who literally gets a sleepwalking scene. Clearly, the man could not be arsed, and at no point during the film’s 108 minutes does he come across as anything other than completely and utterly apathetic.
In the end, Costner’s sole foray into horror was a bust. The New Daughter was greeted with a shrug of indifference, made less than $600,000 at the box office and didn’t even play on the big screen in the United States after suffering the ignominy of going straight-to-video. Berdejo got his wish: Costner was definitely tortured, just not in the way he wanted.
