Daddy’s Head


After losing his dad, James (Charles Aitken, "Happy Death Day"), in a car accident, Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) is left alone in his dad’s remote, architectural marvel near the woods with his young stepmother Laura (Julia Brown, TV's 'Shetland'), who never wanted children.  After James is interred on the property next to his first wife, Isaac’s mother, Isaac, Laura and their dog Bella begin to hear noises overhead and in the walls.  Then Isaac begins to see “Daddy’s Head.”


Laura's Review: C+

Writer/director Benjamin Barfoot combined an eerie image that came to him with his own family background for his sophomore film, a modern day folk horror examination of grief and longing.  It’s very stylish, cinematographer Miles Ridgeway echoing the crisp lines of the glass walled house and the spirals found in Isaac’s drawings in his compositions with the cool palette of both the home and surrounding forest, but despite its bizarre creature concept, it’s not very scary and ultimately unsatisfying.

After opening with an older Isaac (James Harper-Jones) entering the sparsely furnished living room to sit and regard a vent, a flashforward we will return to for a surprising finale, Barfoot takes us back to Laura and Isaac visiting Jamie, whose head is entirely wrapped in bloody gauze, to say goodbye, doctors having assessed brain death.  A flashback to happier times reveals James playing with his son and gifting his wife with Bella as a puppy.  Back at the modernist structure, Laura is told that if she doesn’t take in James’ son, he’ll likely go into foster care.  She begins to drain the wine cellar and lean on friend Robert (Nathaniel Martello-White), who comes over and cooks and tells her the boy needs love.

But both have disturbing visions, Laura calling the fire brigade when billowing smoke blows in from the woods, yet there no fire to be found.  Another evening she’ll awaken to flashing lights and a voice, only to find a wrecked automobile in the woods, her husband’s voice calling her name.  But when Bella begins to bark in the living room one night, both she and Isaac see a black shape under a table, something that scurries out and escapes by crashing through the window in Isaac’s bedroom.  Afraid to sleep alone, Laura will take him in, the two cuddling in the night, but jumping apart when they awaken.  Laura discovers a butcher knife she placed in her nightstand drawer is no longer there and cannot find it, the first of many events she uses to convince herself that Isaac is disturbed, despite what his therapist Mary (Mary Woodvine, "Enys Men") has to say. 

The increasingly isolated Isaac will sit in his room and watch the screws holding a vent work themselves out of the wall, his father’s face appearing, asking him to come to the forest.  Deep in the woods, Bella will bark when Isaac finds an elaborate spiral treehouse he is afraid to enter, even after he once again glimpses daddy’s head.

Whether daddy’s head, which resembles Max Headroom by way of 3D metal pin art sitting atop a black spider’s body, really exists or not is left ambiguous, but other than a symbol of the divide in Laura and Isaac’s relationship and/or their grief, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, its disturbing agenda at odds with the man it represents.  And while we feel for the boy, it is difficult to find sympathy for Laura, whose background consists of a wispy reference to rehab and a statement about having wanted James but not his son.   

Barfoot does keep us guessing where all this is going and then gifts us with a well chosen ending, but “Daddy’s Head” never really finds its footing.



Robin's Review: C+


"Daddy's Head" begins streaming on Shudder on 10/11/24.