‘Daddy’s Head’ Movie Review [Fantastic Fest 2024]: A Hair-Raising Retreading of Loss and Grief

Photo from Rob Baker Ashton/Shudder

From Jeff Nelson

Horror is a useful tool for exploring some of the darkest corners of the human experience. Trauma, grief, and loss are common themes in modern genre filmmaking. Writer/director Benjamin Barfoot’s Daddy’s Head walks in overly familiar footsteps, but he knows how to put together a terrifying atmosphere that will send chills up your spine.

Laura (Julia Brown) and her stepson, Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) are in shock when his father, James (Charles Aitken), unexpectedly dies in a car accident. They fear for their safety after a creature who looks eerily like James infiltrates their forest-adjacent home.

The movie begins with an older Isaac (James Harper-Jones), who stares at a vent in his architecturally gorgeous childhood home before jumping back in time to James’ tragic death. Isaac is now an orphan and Laura a widow, leaving them to struggle with their loss. The pair was never particularly close and they handle grief in vastly different ways. Isaac retreats into video games and Laura turns to alcohol for solace. She’s expected to adopt him to shield him from the foster care system, but she never wanted kids. Laura is likable enough and Isaac is about as irrational and annoying as any other young, rebellious child in the genre.

Daddy’s Head folds a fantastical dreamlike quality into its sobering world. After the sun sets, Laura and Isaac’s isolation from one another gives way to creepy experiences that blur the lines of reality. Their picturesque home contrasts with the horror of the unknown lurking behind the forest line visible from their living room. Barfoot doesn’t dig too deep into the creature’s lore, allowing its nightmarish presence to grow that much larger in the shadows of our minds. Unfortunately, the conclusion hurriedly ties its plot threads too neatly and refuses to leave audiences with the same ambiguity afforded to the creature.

The moody atmosphere is effective, but there is a reliance on jump scares. While some of those jolts are quite successful, they almost always smash cut into the following morning and dampen the well-earned suspense. Much like its characters’ experience with grief, Daddy’s Head merely glances into the dark void, too afraid to dwell in it. 

Daddy’s Head offers plenty of spooky atmosphere and imagery, even though it doesn’t really do enough to color outside the lines of The Babadook. Many of these moody horror movies about grief and loss feel derivative and left without anything new to contribute to their storytelling or characters. However, Barfoot is a promising new voice with a clear understanding of how to craft a good scare. This is an eerie slow burn worthy of adding to Halloween watch lists. 

Rating: 3/5

Daddy’s Head played at Fantastic Fest 2024 on September 22nd, 2024. It streams on Shudder starting on October 11th, 2024.

Follow Jeff