Daddy’s Head (2024) Review: Benjamin Barfoot’s Second Feature is a Decent, Grief-Stricken Psychological Horror/Creature Feature Hybrid

The title Daddy’s Head sure feels like it’s going to be a pitch-black horror comedy. But the truth is, writer-director Benjamin Barfoot’s second feature since Double Date turns out to be a sombre horror drama that emphasizes heavily on grief and loss. The movie doesn’t waste time getting to the grieving part where tween Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) must face the fact that his father James (Charles Aitken) is dead from a car accident. Along with his stepmother Laura (Julia Brown), they get to see him for one last time in the hospital before being taken off life support.

Since then, Laura has become the legal guardian to take care of Isaac but their relationship isn’t close. Her deceased husband, who was an architect, left them a designer home in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the forest. Isaac still couldn’t let go of his father’s death and confined himself in his bedroom. In the meantime, Laura would spend time drowning her sorrows with red wine and at one point, distracting herself with loud music echoing the entire house. They barely talk to each other, especially when comes to heart-to-heart conversations.

Following James’ burial, there’s something sinister that slowly unfolds with moments of things that go bump in the night. Barfoot made good use of the secluded setting to evoke a lingering sense of dread while laying it thick with atmosphere. The fact that Isaac and Laura spend their time isolated at home with occasional visitors such as family friend Robert (Nathaniel Martello-White) drops by to visit them.

Soon, Issac starts to act strange and he’s been hearing his father’s voice calling out for him. He believes that his father is somewhat alive and more so after he heads into the forest and discovers a wooden hut-like structure. Does his father live inside? Or the whole thing about his father still around happens to be a figment of his imagination?

As the movie progresses further, Barfoot introduces a grotesque-looking creature but Barfoot isn’t interested to go a full-blown creature feature, opting instead of obscuring him on the shadows and his appearance is merely a glimpse. This also raises another question: Does the creature actually exist or simply one of Isaac’s imagination? Whatever it is, Barfoot wants to keep it as enigmatic as possible and uses Isaac’s emotional pain, sorrow and rumination. Being at a very young age to cope with the loss of a father is too much to take and it doesn’t help that no matter how hard Laura tries to care for him, he continues to shut her out of his life.

Barfoot knows well how to deal with the emotional and dramatic aspects of the grief-stricken subject matter while benefiting from Rupert Turnbull and Julia Brown’s engaging performances. However, I can’t help but feel the horror parts are more of a hit-or-miss affair. Barfoot may be doing a good job layered his movie with constant atmospheric dread and some effective jump scares. He even scored his own music here and he has Miles Ridgway delivers a moody cinematography that captures the sense of unease and uncertainty.

And yet, the overall scares tend to be repetitive while Barfoot’s penchant for utilising abrupt cuts to jump into the next scene can be annoying at times. While I love the creature design, the eventual reveal is disappointingly short-lived. It does feature a visceral third act but I wish the director could have done more with the payoff, especially after all the slow-burn buildup. Daddy’s Head certainly has the potential to become this decade’s Babadook (yes, Jennifer Kent’s acclaimed psychological horror mystery is already 10 years old). It’s far from the great horror movie that I’m expecting here but remains decent enough for what it is.

Daddy’s Head is currently streaming on Shudder.