Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) has already had to come to terms with the death of his mother, but he now has to deal with the loss of his architect father James (Charles Aitken) in a car accident, leaving him, stepmother Laura (Julia Brown) and their dog to rattle around their grandly-designed house in the middle of rural nowhere. The local reps from Social Services present Laura with the options of taking guardianship of Isaac, or giving him up to the care system. Laura isn’t keen on the second choice, but matters are complicated somewhat by the fact that Isaac hates her.
As Laura attempts to build bridges with an ever more distant Isaac, her stepson experiences visions and visitations from a creature who seems all too familiar with the current situation being played out. Is Isaac unravelling psychologically, or has his father somehow returned from the other side. If so, what are his intentions for the family?
Daddy’s Head is director Benjamin Barfoot’s second feature, his first being 2017’s horror comedy Double Date, and it could hardly be more different than his debut, this time working from his own screenplay and ditching the knockabout shenanigans for a sombre, measured piece in which less is most definitely more, pushing most of its terrors into the shadows and keeping the audience on their toes with a refusal to spell out exactly what is going on.
The small cast all turn in sterling work here. Turnbull and Brown are both excellent, the former steering far away from being the archetypal brat, the latter gradually retreating into the comforts of her luxury home’s well-stocked wine cellar without resorting to that overly theatrical portrayal of being perma-sozzled as a coping mechanism.
Her increasingly forlorn attempts to connect with Isaac elicit real sympathy, but the story keeps the proceedings ambiguous enough to paint neither main protagonist as hero or villain, at one point giving Isaac a decent proportion of the emotional high ground when he spots Laura drunkenly kissing James’ longtime buddy Robert (Nathaniel Martello-White) who’s there to help out. Yeah, right, some of you may be thinking.
If the set up feels recognisable – troubled kid, fraught stepmum, family friend with possible ulterior motive – it is, but Barfoot swerves most of the clichés you’d be expecting, delivering a low-key and unnerving chiller which avoids tiresome screaming matches between Laura and Isaac, their cold, clinical exchanges often matching the trappings of the modern home in which they find themselves increasingly trapped. It also avoids tiresome screaming matches in the horror set pieces, opting to play it far creepier until the final showdown.
There may be the odd moment where the deliberate vagueness applied to almost every plot turn may frustrate but, for the viewer who doesn’t like to be spoon-fed each revelation, Daddy’s Head is a film which doesn’t go the easy route. Its slow burn vibe won’t enamour it to folks who want constant monster action, but there are effective jump scares along the way and the creature design here is the stuff of nightmares, made all the more terrifying for the brief glimpses it’s given across the runtime.
A British chiller that leans into the uncanny and mines the natural weirdness of its rustic locations rather than trying to ape the more brash tropes of family fear fests across the Atlantic, Daddy’s Head embraces its eeriness and only allows itself to break out the bloodshed when absolutely necessary. Even then, some of that is only viewed in its aftermath in order to maintain the mystery in the run up to those final moments, which are very much in keeping with the previous eighty minutes, only tying up the tale with the final shot, again leaving so many blanks to be filled.
To criticise Daddy’s Head for not being spectacular would be to miss the point. It’s contained, often subdued and has interesting things to say on the subject of how different people process grief. It may not hit the mark all of the time, but it’s a movie which sticks resolutely to its own, strange path and only comes unstuck when it reverts to time-honoured touchstones that don’t seem to belong, even if the result is further conundrums. By this I mean: What do you think is going to happen to the dog? Still, if you’re looking for something which gives you the space to do much of the potential plotting work yourself, you could do much worse.
Daddy’s Head (2024) will be available to stream on Shudder from October 11th.