MovieChat Forums > The Horseman (2009) Discussion > Did anyone else feel the dad was more at...

Did anyone else feel the dad was more at fault?


Watching this movie, I couldn't help but feel that the dad was more at fault for his daughter's demise.
I mean she was basically a strawberry...having sex with anybody to get her next drug fix. Nobody forced her to make the porn. She walked into the shoot already a junkie, who's only purpose was to get more drugs. I understand that Dereck probably helped to push her forward when she started to second guess her decision to get gand banged on video. But I imagine that happens all the time on porn sets...girl gets nervous and uses drugs/alcohol to help ease her into the role.

The father is the one who raised this drug addict. I mean he ran around like some avenging angel, when the whole time the person who played the biggest role in his daughter's sorry outcome was himself. And to top it off, he drags poor Alice into it.

Either way, I still enjoyed the movie.
I think it could have been a much better movie and risen above all the "daddy avenges daughter" movies if it had addresses the father's short comings asa parent and his role in her demise.

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Are you a bug Bill Murray?

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I do not agree. We can not just assume that he was a bad father and forced this life style upon his daughter. Lots of "good" people become addicted and do stupid things to get their fix. I think it would have thrown the pacing off if it had shown any more of the back story. I enjoyed the movie also.

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I understand what you wrote, BUT, does he EVER question HIS role in her addiction? Im not saying he did, cause sometimes good parents end up with loser kids........but I found it strange, so far in the movie, he doesn't even QUESTION his role........ESPECIALLy when he obviously has such a stand on right and wrong.

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His role? His role was being a concerned father who his deceitful daughter obviously hid her drug abuse from. You have bought into some liberal pop psychology bs which blames a child's actions on their parents. Some teens just make really dumb decisions! There are tons of teens who are raised in warm, loving, nurturing homes, even with both parents present and engaged in their child's life and the children still get involved in alcohol, drugs, fornication. If someone WANTS to do something they WILL do it.

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Are you kidding me ? "The father is the one who raised this drug addict. I mean he ran around like some avenging angel, when the whole time the person who played the biggest role in his daughter's sorry outcome was himself. And to top it off, he drags poor Alice into it." I seriously doubt that the father raised her to be a drug user, as a matter of fact they made it quite clear in the movie that he had no idea his daughter was a user; until after her death.Parents can raise a child as best they can,so that the child matures to be responsible and well adjusted as an adult;however once that child reaches adulthood the parents responsibility ends.A lot of time that well raised young adult chooses a wrong lifestyle in-spite of proper upbringing and in these cases only a fool would turn and blame the parents.The daughter in The Horseman...the person who played the biggest part in her "sorry outcome" was herself.She is the one who was ultimately responsible for "her" actions.When you state "he drags poor Alice into it." you almost make me think that you were watching a totally different movie from the one I watched.The guy didn't drag poor Alice into anything;he and Alice got jumped.Like they always say...sometimes *beep* happens.

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And sometimes the parents screw their kids up.............EITHER scenerio is as plausible as the next.........ESPECIALLY when you are a person that can KILL several people....THIS is a movie, but in real life...you kill like this, there usually is more to the picture.

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I COMPLETELY agree with the OP. People who believe in bad seeds are stupid. People absolutely fail with their children. Look at this piece of work:

http://www.dailyhaha.com/_vids/scared_of_shrimp.htm

Trust me, this (and worse) goes on all the time and it affects kids more than anyone of you idiots seems to know. And news flash: You don't have to be a child abuser/molester to do major harm to your kid.

People can't handle their own relationships, can't manage what they eat, can't manage their finances, can't drive, and suck up horrible entertainment (like Transformers 2 and pop music) because of horrible tastes...

...What in hell makes you think that the majority of people out there instinctively know how to raise children? Are you crazy?!

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It is a very good point you raise. I had similar thoughts watching it. If the father is such a good father, why did his daughter get screwed up like this. She got in with the wrong crowd and needed money to get her drugs. She entered porn to achieve this. I think the father was taking action because the porn producers took advantage of her, rather than deter her. The father really wasn't credible in my opinion.

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Who in the hell thought this guy saw himself as an avenging angel? All I saw was a man taking out his rage. I really felt like this movie didn't try to justify his actions and make him a hero. If anything, it pushed him close to being another villain. I think it's pretty obvious that this character is supposed to be in the grey area.

Having said that, it irritates the hell out of me that people automatically blame parents for everyone's mistakes. Some drugs get you addicted after a single attempt. All it would take for her life to spiral out of control like this would be bending to peer pressure just one time. I think it's utter crap to claim that there are certain things parents can do which absolutely guarantee that a child would always say "no" in those situations. I highly doubt many of the people who blame the dad are parents themselves.

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Remember that time I ate your family?

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Well it cant be just his fault she has a mother too, and it seems they are a divorced couple so that is something to take in aswell children of divorced parents are more prown to have drug habbits because they dont have "BOTH" parents in there life..

but if watched properly the girl was into coke and they said heroin was forced on her & as she is not in the movie for all we know she was there to audition to be in home & away or something..


I do not think any of this really matters the director obviously just wanted a good revenge film & this was one way around it..

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Honestly, I see some reply's to this topic... not reading every single one of them, but I'm pretty sure whats happening is you're going sideways with figuring out what this movie is. Youre all thinking its a revenge movie... Im seeing that as being wrong. This movie wasnt about revenge, its about a father, who lost his daughter and is off the deep end dealing with it. People do drugs, people make porn, porn... not that huge of a thing... unless your daughter decides to make a few bucks doing it. This guys daughter happened to die after doing something that is going to make a father feel pretty rotten. If she had died... on a street corner, maybe this guy would have been going after drug dealers... if she had died in a friends basement... another new situation. But she didnt, she died after she let a room full of guys fill her up with dope and take turns on her... and this just happens to be the way he reacts to that.

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Well how he chose to react was with "REVENGE"

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avenging angel or whatever it is..i don't care...but i strongly backs the father..everyone should be like that...


only I care ..is ..every single person who commits heinous crimes..could be killed in a heinous manner..on all costs..on all every *beep* costs every criminal is to be eliminated..

read the papers..look for criminals..it's not like that to kill people who did not harm anyone closer to you..but avenge for innocents those who are totally strangers to you...take justice in your hands, respond...and avenge for innocent victims..

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I agree with the OP... to a point. Yeah, he probably wasn't the best father but who is? What made the movie especially poignant was his bloodlust, as cathartic and arguably justified as it may be, ultimately scarred an innocent girl. This is what makes it a cut above most revenge movies. He took his revenge but, like everything, there was a cost.

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I vehemently disagree with your notion that the father could be "blamed" for the daughter's decisions and ultimate fate, especially since we don't actually know anything about their relationship prior to the events in the movie.

However, I still had a very hard time accepting the dad as a positive character. His vigilantism just came off as being fueled by self-righteousness and blind anger, rather than a sense of justice. I'm generally not a big fan of these "Average Joe takes the law in his own hands" type of stories, but in this case, I was particularly ticked off by the excessive violence he employed and the glee he felt while torturing those, who he perceived to be the bad guys. I guess one big problem for me was that I never got to learn much about the character outside of his quest for vengeance. I only ever saw him in extremes as either a sadistic psychopath, rivaling Michael Madsen in Reservoir Dogs, or a frigging Yoda, dropping sage advice on the young girl, but I never got to see what sort of a man he was before his daughter had died. Was he choleric, vindictive and driven by wrath back then too? I don't know, because the movie didn't show me the "Normal Christian".

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But there was a soft side to him that we see when he's with his daughter as a small child and in scenes with Alice. He told Alice he married his daughter's mother when he found out she was pregnant. He encouraged Alice to give her parents a second chance and go home. He fought to save Alice. He's shown crying when he thinks she's dead/sees she's been raped. There's even dialogue about getting up and helping his daughter go back to sleep after having bad dreams. He said "They think we are." when he talks about kids believing parents are strong. All these things seem like good qualities to me. That's not to say that going out and torturing people and killing them is right, in my opinion. It's not. I can identify with him as I'm also a parent. I've got no idea what I'd be capable of doing if I found out someone gave my son a heroin overdose which ended up killing him, accidentally or not, especially if it was given to make him do something he was trying to back out of doing..

This post isn't meant to be argumentative. It's just my take on Christian's character.

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Wow what a bunch of utter bullsh*t. This was a grown woman, she made the decision to use drugs, she made the decision to sell her body for money. This was not some alcoholic abusive or absentee father! He obviously loved her and was around in her life. As he said she was a very rebellious teenager, and would lock herself away in her room. And teens are not dumb they are VERY good at hiding their drug use in the beginning stages. Recall when he found the crack pipe in her room (after she died and he was boxing things up) he looked very surprised and upset. What those thugs did to her was evil, but she was also in spiritual darkness. For you to lay the culpability for her death on her father is dumb.

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