Chris Stokes and Marques Houston are the kings of Tubi. Seriously, these guys have a movie a month and it feels like I’m the only one going crazy about their work, but who cares? You can be a weirdo like me and get super jazzed about these movies too and yell at your TV or whatever device you choose to watch Tubi on.
When we last saw Joanna (Cassidey Fralin), she had ruined the lives of her father, real estate millionaire Michael Lawrence (Blue Kimble) and her new stepmother Whitney (Annie Ilonzeh), a self-made cosmetics company owner. To remind you how horrible she is, this starts with flashbacks to her launching her grandmother down the steps, burning a woman’s face with tainted makeup, killing a family friend, throwing a woman off a balcony and so much more. They skipped how she threw Whitney’s mother’s ashes all over the place!
I’m already yelling at the screen and this just got started.
Michael is missing, Joanna is contained in critical condition in a hospital after being shot in the chest and the cops are on the case. Somehow, despite the police knowing where she is, they can’t contact her family. Look, I’m not here to make these movies make sense. I’m here to react like I’m watching old ECW matches.
Despite Joanna nearly being dead, she kills someone and runs off. Did you expect anything to be different? No. Look, we’re here to see people drink fancy drinks in fancy places and interfamily ballistics.
This guy Matt is trying to pick up Ms. Daniels at a bar when Christopher drops in and threatens him, says he’s her husband, then says, “Blessings, king” before calling the guy an asshole.
Two weeks later and Joanna is in Debra’s house, refusing to help cook or clean. She’s only there because they can’t find her father, who you know, we just saw. Joanna follows this up by kicking her Aunt Deb down the steps as her kids lose their minds. She’s good at launching people down the steps.
Now it’s one year later. Christopher is now married to Tessa (Erica Pinkett), who owns Stretch, a non-surgical spandex company. She has a son named Trevor (Keyon Bowman), who is quite the athlete. So Christopher has done pretty well in a short time, finding another gorgeous wife and a great family. They both helped him heal and he’s honored to be in their family.
Joanna shows up on schedule, arriving at a family party, the same as the last movie.
“How did your aunt die?” asks Christopher.
“She fell down the stairs,” replies Joanna.
“Again?” Christopher screams.
“Why is my family so clumsy?” answers Joanna, crying and begging for a place to stay.
While Tessa has some issues, Joanna moves in and starts tutoring her son. She knows what’s going on with her father, who thinks that he’s into another scam. And as for Whitney cuts her wrist on a bottle and screams at her children, saying that she failed and their friend died. She was married to a murderer!
On that same day, she goes to her first day of AA and sees Cedric (Mike Hill), the cop who is on the trail of Joanna and Michael. Whitney is worried because she shot both of them in the heart and they’re still alive. He wants to use her as bait and, you know, they used to date.
Michael has gotten Tessa pregnant, which screws up his plans with his daughter, as now they need to kill everyone to make sure they get the money. Just as he reveals that he knows she is going to be having a baby, Brandon shows up.
Who?
Brandon is Tessa’s ex and Chris takes it about as well as you’d think. He’s Travis’ biological father, not Hank, her husband who died. Chris says, “You need to explain this to me like i’m a child.” Trevor doesn’t even know that his dead is alive and she goes through the story of how she had a baby and yet married another man.
Best of all, Brandon doesn’t know that he has a son.
The world of The Stepdaughter is a pretty complicated one.
Meanwhile, the crazy guy from across the street, Henry — who Travis is afraid of — knows that Joanna is a criminal from watching the news. He keeps trying to get the word out to Tessa, who is all upset about Brandon, who has also upset Chris.
While this is all happening, the family from the last movie is trying to get the cops the help they need, just as Whitney reconnects with Cedric, a fact that doesn’t seem to make her sons happy.
As if enough hasn’t happened, Joanna has killed the old man across the street and tells Travis about his real father. It turns out. that Joanna was the one that informed everyone — Brandon and Travis — about them being father and son. Tessa reacts by trying to asphyxiate Joanna, while Chris tackles her and then Travis hits him. Tessa screams for everyone to get out.
The Stepdaughter 2 lives up to the legacy of Stokes and Houston, perhaps their best movie yet.
Trevor leaves to see his father just in time to see Chris punching him into oblivion. Everyone has run away and Tessa is calling the police, just as Chris grabs her and starts to shake her like a baby. This is soon followed by Joanna taking Travis and knocking Tessa out with a frying pan before telling her father that he made a mistake falling for one of his targets. She calls him his real name, Michael, as the cops start to figure it all out.
As for Joanna, she’s the only child that gets to be happy, as she wants to poison everyone to get revenge for Chris/Michael killing her mother. Now she wants to kill everyone and get everything, which has father and daughter firing guns at one another and stalking through a dark house.
The cops arrive just in time, but come on, you know this can’t end like that. Chris/Michael has escape prison and the police want Joanna/Maggie to help them find her, just as her father shows up at Whitney’s mansion.
The Stepdaughter 3? I can’t wait.
You can watch this on Tubi.