"A Daughter's Nightmare" begins with the funeral of Ariel Morgan's father Jack, who died after a lengthy terminal illness. At the ceremony, Ariel sings a lovely tribute to her dad. Unfortunately, that was the most uplifting moment in this overly unpleasant and lugubrious tale.
Young Ben Woods and his stepfather Adam get linked up with Ariel and her mother Dana. It is never convincingly explained in the film how Adam finagles his way into a grief counseling session in order to meet Dana. What follows is a ghastly sequence of events where Adam is drugging Dana, sending her into a nearly comatose stupor. Adam's motivation for this nasty behavior is never persuasively unfolded in the script.
Along the way, Adam is responsible for the death of Dana's brother-in-law, Cameron, who drinks a cup of Adam's pill-laced coffee and dies. The drugged coffee had a synergistic reaction with Cameron's heart pills, leading to a massive heart attack. Another funeral takes place for the Morgan family, and Cameron is laid to rest. His headstone reads "No Regrets."
It eventually becomes apparent that Adam has been drugging his stepson as well. The result is that Ben suffers from tunnel vision and is subject to delusions. Adam even kills a beautiful little dog by using the same drug.
The filmmakers struggled to find any credible motivation for the psychopathology of Adam. It turns out that his real name is Patrick Adamson. He murdered his first wife, a former Miss Texas. After marrying Ben's mother, Adam murdered her as well and led the coroner to conclude that it was a self-induced drug overdose. A flashback scene into Adamson's youth indicated this his mother died of tuberculosis. But it was unclear how her death (possibly induced by a deranged father) would eventually result in his own twisted mind, somehow motivating him to capriciously murder multiple women.
The cast deserves credit for rising above the material to turn in credible performances. The most interesting character was Ariel, who was the first to become suspicious of Adam and then move into action to rescue her mother. In the end, however, the beautiful film footage of Washington State could not compensate for the ugly nature of this excessively morbid film.
Young Ben Woods and his stepfather Adam get linked up with Ariel and her mother Dana. It is never convincingly explained in the film how Adam finagles his way into a grief counseling session in order to meet Dana. What follows is a ghastly sequence of events where Adam is drugging Dana, sending her into a nearly comatose stupor. Adam's motivation for this nasty behavior is never persuasively unfolded in the script.
Along the way, Adam is responsible for the death of Dana's brother-in-law, Cameron, who drinks a cup of Adam's pill-laced coffee and dies. The drugged coffee had a synergistic reaction with Cameron's heart pills, leading to a massive heart attack. Another funeral takes place for the Morgan family, and Cameron is laid to rest. His headstone reads "No Regrets."
It eventually becomes apparent that Adam has been drugging his stepson as well. The result is that Ben suffers from tunnel vision and is subject to delusions. Adam even kills a beautiful little dog by using the same drug.
The filmmakers struggled to find any credible motivation for the psychopathology of Adam. It turns out that his real name is Patrick Adamson. He murdered his first wife, a former Miss Texas. After marrying Ben's mother, Adam murdered her as well and led the coroner to conclude that it was a self-induced drug overdose. A flashback scene into Adamson's youth indicated this his mother died of tuberculosis. But it was unclear how her death (possibly induced by a deranged father) would eventually result in his own twisted mind, somehow motivating him to capriciously murder multiple women.
The cast deserves credit for rising above the material to turn in credible performances. The most interesting character was Ariel, who was the first to become suspicious of Adam and then move into action to rescue her mother. In the end, however, the beautiful film footage of Washington State could not compensate for the ugly nature of this excessively morbid film.