Terrorists may be inappropriate as cinematic villains these days, but thank God there'll always be psychos.

If you've been to a theatre in the past six months, you've probably seen the trailer for Domestic Disturbance. And you may sense that it is reminiscent of dozens of films -- including The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Unlawful Entry, Fatal Attraction -- in which some form of human monster insinuates him/herself into the blissful nuclear family.

What the monsters have in common is a singularity of purpose (kill!) and what I call the Chumbawumba Factor (i.e. they get knocked down, and get back up to scare again).

In this case, the monster is a stepdad, Rick Davis, played by Vince Vaughn (sorry, I forgot to mention The Stepfather in that pantheon), who marries Susan (Teri Polo) the ex-wife of New England shipbuilder Frank Morrison (John Travolta), putting troubled kid Danny (Frank O'Leary) in jeopardy.

Vaughn has complained that this film is more complicated, that you're meant to gradually twig to Rick's monstrousness, but that the trailer spells everything out and ruins the surprise.

Nice try. Why would they hire an actor who's wound tighter than a Titleist golfball if they didn't want you to look at him and think "Psycho!"?

Which you do in fairly short order, during a wedding scene when one of Rick's old criminal cronies (Steve Buscemi) shows up by surprise, triggering all sorts of nervous tics in Vaughn. Like we needed them. What? No neon "Psycho" sign?

Rick, being an upstanding, high-profile citizen of his newly-adopted duckburg, needs to eliminate this threat. Unfortunately, Danny witnesses same. Worse, Danny has a record as an offender and a history of lying, which means he's stuck in the house with a sociopath, and no one will believe him.

Except, of course, his father. And even he takes a while. The movie slogan is, "He will do anything to protect his family." And yet -- except for the hand-to-hand combat at the end -- Travolta is not hugely proactive, spending most of the time wrestling with whether or not he believes Danny.

There's the requisite explosions en route to the denouement (everyone knows psychos must be dispatched with extreme prejudice). After which, you might ask, what is the lesson to be learned? In Hand That Rocks The Cradle, for example, it's "stay at home, mom." In Fatal Attraction, it's "keep your fly zipped, married guy. Single women are nuts."

And this one? Consider Polo's line in the trailer, to the effect, "Do you think I'm so desperate for a man that I'd put my son in jeopardy?" Um, yeah. Isn't that what the movie's about?

So the lesson here: Mom, if you're going to get married again, make sure to get your ex-husband's approval, 'cause he could be a psycho (the new guy, I mean). (More on: Domestic Disturbance).

(This film is rated AA)

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