When I saw the trailer for Benjamin Barfoot’s Daddy’s Head (2024), I scoffed at the menacing shots of a minimalist glass house. In recent years, too many filmmakers have leaned on the easy horror of see-through structures, exploiting the vulnerability of their occupants instead of doing the difficult work of developing a better story. If the modern architecture felt like a dull hook to me, so, too, did the quick image of the traumatized child with his scary drawings. I’ve seen the Babadook as well as a dozen other films that rely on this conceit. And finally, the uninspiring plot synopsis seemed to confirm my initial impression that Daddy’s Head was a superfluous retread: The idea of a monster as a metaphor for grief is certainly nothing new. It’s about as hackneyed as the cliché I’m about to use: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Knowing that VOD companies need an endless supply of movies to maintain the firehose pressure of their streaming services, I mistakenly assumed that Daddy’s Head was some slick but ultimately empty “content,” with all of the generic sameness that the term implies. I’m happy to report that I was wrong and glad that my preconceptions didn’t cause me to miss out on a good film. 

Where the trailer and summary failed, the title succeeded. I was intrigued by the suggestive phrase “Daddy’s Head”; and in hindsight, I can see that the name, which first struck me as provocative innuendo, is in fact a compact directive for approaching a film that demands to be taken literally. While I initially interpreted the phase as a figure of speech for something sexual, I quickly discovered that its true significance lies in a rigidly concrete reading: Daddy’s head–the one that used to sit atop his shoulders–is appearing as if cut and pasted on an unnatural body; and this radical defamiliarization of a friendly face is profoundly disturbing. Unlike so many modern boogeymen, Barfoot’s monster isn’t a psychological sock puppet, a symbolic manifestation of grief that mutates in accordance with the shifting dictates of the characters’ trauma. Rather, it’s a real creature whose appearance seems to have nothing to do with the family’s heartache but is instead the result of some cosmic occurrence, the nature of which is delightfully ambiguous. I love the injection of an extraterrestrial theme in what could have been a predictable drama about people with poor coping skills. This isn’t to say that Barfoot skimps on the human element. What makes this film so effective is that he balances the monster with well-drawn characters, particularly Laura, the flawed but sympathetic widow who struggles to keep things together in an impossible situation. 

So let’s get into it: When James, an uber-rich architect, dies in a car accident, his wife Laura and son Isaac are devastated. Their awful situation is made worse by their dysfunctional relationship. Isaac, whose real mother is dead, hates his father’s second wife and spurns all of her attempts at kindness. And Laura, who never really wanted children, accepts sole custody of her husband’s son out of a sense of duty rather than love. Isolated in their glass mansion on hundreds of wooded acres, Laura falls back on old addictions and seeks comfort from an overly solicitous family friend. Meanwhile, Isaac is repeatedly visited by a dark-bodied creature with James’ face that claims to be his father. To Laura, Isaac’s unsettling encounters are signs of a mind unhinged by grief and, as his behavior becomes increasingly erratic, she begins to fear for her own safety. What is the thing pursuing Isaac and will it introduce itself to Laura before she flees the estate, leaving him to a life in foster care or–if his visions are real–something far worse. 

This may seem like a digression from Daddy’s Head, but I promise that it comes back around. I have a crafty friend who, every holiday season, gathers yarn, cloth, and popsicle sticks to make biblically accurate cherubim tree-toppers. What makes these bible-based gifts so horrifying is the striking disharmony of their parts: the jarring combination of human and animal faces along with the grotesque multiplicity of mismatched limbs. I’m not suggesting that the creature in Daddy’s Head is a Christian angel or demon, though he may be if you subscribe to the Lovecraftian view that our divinities are actually visitors from another planet. Rather, I bring up my friend’s tree toppers because their discordant design inspires an instinctive aversion in me that’s similar to how I feel when confronted with the confused form of Barfoot’s monster. James’ rictus grin is in open enmity with the xenomorphic head on which it is fixed; it’s a seemingly endless expanse of crown and forehead that terminates quite shockingly in familiar human features. Similarly, its body is an unsettling mashup of the anthropomorphic and the alien. If the creature has the lean and muscled figure of a contemporary dancer, it also has vinyl black skin and the posture of a cricket. This startling collection of attributes feels wrong at a gut level. Like the cherubim, this thing bypasses my reason and goes straight to the reptile part of my brain where perhaps atavistic memories of eldritch beasts and unspeakable threats are stored. In other words, my heart was racing before I could comprehend what I was looking at. Or, in some instances, understand what I was hearing. The sound of the creature’s voice when it teaches itself to pronounce Isaac’s name is the kind of pure audio terror that produces a genuine somatic reaction, tingling the spine and raising the hairs on the back of the neck.

I’ve described the monster in Daddy’s Head as an alien, but let me walk that back a bit. While a sci-fi reading may be the most obvious, it’s not the only interpretation available. And it’s this ambiguity that makes the movie so gripping. Yes, there’s smoke which indicates that a flying object has crashed in the woods, but no craft or incinerated site of impact is ever found. And when the creature does build a habitation, it’s made entirely of sticks without a wire or slick surface in sight. If he came from a high tech saucer, wouldn’t some salvageable bits of technology have made their way to his new home? Earlier, I said that he wasn’t a demon, but who knows? Maybe there’s no craft because he was hurled from heaven (or ascended from hell) and the smoke is a sulfurous contrail. Aside from his origins, there are other questions. Why does his appearance coincide with James’ death and, more importantly, what does he want? As Isaac’s continued safety indicates, the creature’s intention doesn’t seem to be to hurt anyone. He runs from danger and steals a kitchen knife for self-protection, a move that suggests he isn’t a natural predator. He tries to subdue Bella the guard dog with mimetic trickery before finally resorting to violence (Bella would not be deterred, unfortunately). Barfoot could have provided pat answers to all of these questions, but I’m glad that he didn’t. By veiling the visitor’s history and psychology, he keeps us in the dark which is the best place to be during a horror movie.  

If you don’t like ambiguity in your horror, then focus on the palpable humanity of the film’s protagonist, Laura, who, despite her rarified status as an obscenely wealthy widow, manages to invite identification and sympathy. Sure, we might give her side eye for marrying a man with a child when she didn’t want to be a mother. But it’s easy to understand how James’ death and her consequent single parenthood would have seemed inconceivable. She can’t give Isaac up because how would that look? When your husband leaves you multiple estates and a large fortune, the least you can do is raise his son, right? The force of this weighty expectation, which is given voice by other characters, puts her in a dangerous predicament. She has her own mourning to attend to and the depiction of her despair is unvarnished–staring catatonically at videos of James, drunkenly singing songs that had meaning for them as a couple, and carelessly blaring club music in the middle of the night. This is ugly behavior but also a realistic response to having your heart ripped out. So, too, is her descent into alcoholism, an addiction that, like an animal of prey, seems to have been circling her, waiting for the collapse. A good way to get me invested in a character is to incite my anger on their behalf, and Barfoot provides plenty of provocation. Robert, the family friend, willfully ignores huge red flags; and the social worker, who should be advocating for a healthy and sustainable outcome, enforces the continuance of an incredibly volatile situation. Even when Isaac appears to pose a clear and present physical danger to Laura, no one listens to her entreaties for help. 

I suspect that there’s a whole layer to Laura that I’m missing. The sparkly purple dress at her husband’s funeral suggests that her taste is unrefined and that she misunderstands the social norms of the elite. In other words, I think there’s a class difference between her and the other characters–one probably expressed through accents–that I, as an ignorant American, cannot detect. 

While Daddy’s Head has a strong lead and an amazing monster, it’s also got a plot hole and a structural issue. The problem on which the story hinges is too contrived. We’re told that, if Laura doesn’t accept custody of Isaac, he will go into “the system.” But do the scions of the ultra wealthy really go into foster care? When you’re as rich as god, the problem of unwanted children doesn’t exist because you can send them to elite boarding schools or, at the very least, hire people to raise them. It’s impossible to believe that neither Laura nor the social worker think of Eton or some other prestigious institution for the precocious boy. Like the implausibility of the set-up, the extraneous framing device pulled me (albeit temporarily) out of the story. The introduction of an older Isaac serves no purpose but to prove that the monster was real and not a figment of his childish imagination. But by the end of the movie, this proof is redundant. 

Daddy’s Head has been on Shudder since mid-October so, by now, you’ve either seen it or decided to pass. If, like me, you were turned off by the trailer and the synopsis, then I encourage you to override your horror instincts and give it a chance.