‘Daddy’s Head’ evaluate: Grief stirs up scares on this atmospheric creature characteristic

Grief haunts a younger boy and his stepmother in Daddy’s Head, the second characteristic from director Benjamin Barfoot (Double Date).

The movie premiered at 2024’s Implausible Fest, the place attendees additionally celebrated the tenth anniversary of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, and it is arduous to not put the movies in dialog. Each cope with grief over dropping a father determine and a husband, each heart on a lady struggling to boost a troubled boy, and each characteristic a terrifying creature who may as effectively have jumped straight out of a kid’s creativeness. But Daddy’s Head forges its personal path too, mixing its Babadook influences with people horror to create an unsettling portrait of how grief can rip us to shreds.

What’s Daddy’s Head about?

Earlier than Daddy’s Head launches us right into a nightmarish creature characteristic, it introduces us to a nightmare that is all too actual. Younger Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) should say goodbye to his father James (Charles Aitken), who’s being taken off life assist following a devastating automotive crash.

Isaac has already misplaced his mom, and since James had no subsequent of kin, his authorized guardian is now his stepmother Laura (Julia Brown). Whereas Isaac and Laura aren’t shut, Daddy’s Head sidesteps the evil stepmother trope. As a substitute, early glimpses of house video from again when James was nonetheless alive paint Laura as somebody making an attempt to know Isaac, at the same time as he processes the arrival of a brand new maternal determine. At one level, seeing how a lot he loves drawing, Laura presents him a set of coloured pencils. Isaac is lower than thrilled. It is a quietly brutal second, one in which you’ll be able to empathize with each Laura and Isaac. She hopes for connection, whereas he’s nonetheless combating huge life modifications.

The uneasy distance between Laura and Isaac turns into fraught within the wake of James’ loss of life. Laura was actually not able to lose her husband, not to mention be the mom to his son. Each evening, she numbs herself with wine and residential movies, all whereas weighing the choice of surrendering Isaac to social companies. Not sure of his personal destiny, Isaac performs video games and yearns for his father’s return.

You may assume that return unimaginable, given the actual fact the movie opens with flashes of his bloodied, pulverized face. But in some way, some elements of James observe Isaac and Laura again to their modern, ultra-modern home, turning their grief right into a literal horror present.

Daddy’s Head finds horror within the grieving course of.

James Harper-Jones in “Daddy’s Head.”
Credit score: Courtesy of Rob Baker Ashton

The spooky occurrences in Daddy’s Head begin sluggish and disparate, with flashing lights paying homage to police vehicles blasting by means of Laura and Isaac’s home windows, and unexplainable fires popping up within the forest that surrounds them. Right here, the movie falls right into a sample: day scenes that ramp up the strain between Laura and Isaac, then creepy evening scenes the place a wine-drunk Laura experiences these unusual happenings. Between this sample and a collection of rote leap scares, Daddy’s Head falls right into a bland routine for a time.

Fortunately, issues decide up with the arrival of the titular monster, a scurrying, smiling reproduction of James’ head. (Or might it even be the actual factor?) It lurks in air vents and calls to Isaac from the forest with a raspy voice that, sure, remembers the Babadook. After all, Laura believes the creature to be a figment of Isaac’s creativeness, particularly given all of the grotesque monsters he is drawn round his room. Even its kind — and the movie’s personal title — recommend a foolish, infantile monster.

Nonetheless, as proof of the creature’s existence rapidly grows irrefutable, how Laura and Isaac select to cope with it would outline their relationship going ahead. Will they provide in to the monster? Will they proceed to disclaim its existence? Or will they band collectively and discover frequent floor on this shared, traumatic expertise? On this, the monster turns into a stand-in for grief, and for the emotional limits it pushes us to. Each Brown and Turnbull ship transferring work as two individuals with very completely different routes to take by means of mourning. Brown is all unsureness and numbness, whereas Turnbull brings a susceptible rage to Isaac’s ache.

Barfoot wrings scares from areas apart from grief as effectively, particularly relating to ambiance. James designed the home Laura and Isaac now endure in, successfully trapping his household in a jail of his presence. An unsettling picket construction Isaac discovers within the woods makes for a people horror-tinged counterpoint to the primary home, and a perfect lair for the monster that lurks inside. The slightest flicker of James’ smile within the construction’s darkish depths is sufficient to ship you cowering again in your chair. Equally chilling is the truth that Isaac seems not frightened by this sight, however as an alternative comforted, his very notion of the world warped by loss. Sure, he could also be haunted by a disembodied head, however grief and its influence are the actual monsters right here.

Daddy’s Head was reviewed out of its world premiere at Implausible Fest. It premieres Oct. 11 on Shudder.