Some might struggle with the ambiguity of Barfoot’s final scenes. However, this ambiguity is both intentional and well-placed, as it leaves us pondering the journey we have taken alongside Laura and Isaac, and the horrifying power of grief in shifting, distorting, and twisting our reality. Daddy’s Head is now streaming on Shudder.
Director Benjamin Barfoot opens his chilling tale of grief and supernatural terror, Daddy’s Head, with young Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) entering a hospital room where his father lies comatose, his face wrapped in bandages, and his body lifeless. Isaac and his father’s second wife, Laura (Julia Brown), are there to say goodbye to a devoted father and husband, but for Isaac, it’s not the first goodbye; only a few years before, he lost his mother, as well.
As Isaac is left alone with a stepmother he has never accepted in a vast, modern house designed by his father on the edge of a forest, grief eats away at him as he rejects Laura’s attempts to offer support. Meanwhile, Laura struggles to deal with Isaac’s volatile behaviour and her own grief, descending into bottle after bottle of wine as a coping mechanism.
When a mysterious creature appears, scurrying through the house at night, its body thin and spider-like, Laura believes it to have been a wild animal from the forest. But in the darkness of Issac’s bedroom, the creature’s face becomes familiar, a distorted image of a dad killed in a horrific car crash just weeks before. Laura doesn’t believe that the beast Isaac calls ‘dad’ exists, but Isaac won’t let Laura disrupt this opportunity to reconnect with a dad he thought was gone forever.
Benjamin Barfoot’s beautifully shot, atmospheric chiller isn’t the first psychological horror to explore grief, separation and mistrust. In its visually arresting style, narrative path, and ability to unsettle its audience, Daddy’s Head owes much to Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy, Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, and Grimm’s fairytales. But far from a copy of any of the above, Daddy’s Head carves out its own unique path.
With a creature designed to have you squirming in your seat, Declan Price’s haunting production design and a soundscape that sends a shiver down the spine, Barfoot’s screenplay drew upon his own emotions at the separation of his parents when he was young, and this helps create an atmosphere built on lived childhood experiences and feelings. Some might struggle with the ambiguity of Barfoot’s final scenes. However, this ambiguity is both intentional and well-placed, as it leaves us pondering the journey we have taken alongside Laura and Isaac, and the horrifying power of grief in shifting, distorting, and twisting our reality.
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