The Scare Salon

It very slightly reminded me of The Babadook, at least in terms of the monster being a sort of manifestation of grief, so if you liked that, you might dig this as well.

We’re following a young woman named Laura (Julia Brown) whose new husband James (Charles Aitken) has just been killed in a horrible car accident that must have obliterated his face beyond all recognition because all we see of him in the hospital before his life support is turned off is a head and body completely covered in bandages.

James was a widower, and he and his deceased first wife had a son named Isaac (Rupert Turnbull), who looks about twelve years old. Isaac, of course, is beside himself, having just lost both parents in a brief span of time, and what’s worse, he’s now stuck with Laura, a stepmother he barely knows and doesn’t seem to like too much.

James was a successful architect, and Laura inherits the beautiful modern house he built out in the woods, as well as several other properties and a generous life insurance policy. She’s financially set, in other words, but Isaac is a whole other matter. Child services give Laura the choice of either taking over guardianship of the boy or giving up custody to the state, which would mean Isaac would likely end up in the foster system. Although her relationship with Isaac is strained and she never really wanted children, she agrees to look after him in honor of her late husband. Isaac, of course, is not happy about this, and acts sullen and a bit surly, often retreating into his room to play video games or draw.

Laura is having her own issues as well. It’s implied that she was once an alcoholic but got sober; the stress of James’s death and dealing with Isaac, though, causes her to start hitting the bottle again. She does have some support in the form of a kind case worker/child psychologist, and a close friend and neighbor named Robert (Nathaniel Martello-White), who was also friends with James, but Laura feels bad burdening Robert with her problems since he’s in the middle of a divorce and has two daughters of his own to raise.

James is actually buried on the property next to his first wife, which Laura isn’t too keen about, but goes along with because it was what he wanted. Not too long into the story, the family dog Bella (who very much does not make it, so be warned) starts barking incessantly toward the woods for seemingly no reason. There are also weird lights out in the woods at night sometimes, and one day there’s a bunch of smoke in the trees out in the distance, but when the fire brigade shows up, they can’t find the source of it. Laura is beginning to feel uneasy in this vast, glass-walled house in the middle of nowhere, and Isaac’s withdrawn hostility isn’t helping.

Then, one night, both Laura and Isaac see some… thing on the living room floor, back in the shadows. They can’t tell what it is, but Bella is barking at it like crazy, and then it suddenly takes off, scuttling through the house and ultimately crashing out through Isaac’s bedroom window while Bella chases it. The only thing they can think of is that it was some kind of animal, but the whole situation is very unsettling, to say the least.

More weird stuff happens, like all the plants on James’s grave being torn up and destroyed, and a big knife going missing from the kitchen (well, actually from Laura’s nightstand where she put it after the “animal” incident, but it was originally from the kitchen). Even more bizarre, Isaac is walking out in the woods one day and discovers this massive, folk-horrory-looking structure made of branches, sort of like a cabin designed by M.C. Escher. He assumes his dad built it, but he has no idea when.

As the story goes on, Isaac starts hearing what he presumes is his father calling his name in a really creepy, croaky voice, and after a while, he starts to see him too, though he doesn’t look quite the same as he did when he was alive. He actually just has James’s face, but the rest of him looks like a black, almost spidery creature (though he has human arms and legs I think, and is roughly human-sized).

Naturally, no one believes Isaac when he insists that his father is still alive and living in the structure out in the woods; Laura and the case worker just think he’s having a hard time processing James’s death and is letting his imagination run away with him. But it turns out that this thing is absolutely real; it’s just not who (or what) Isaac thinks it is.

This was a delightfully spooky film, utilizing a slow buildup of dread rather than wall-to-wall monster action and being much more affecting for it. The relationship between Laura and Isaac is very well-delineated, and even though we can feel Laura’s frustration at suddenly being thrust into single motherhood of a kid who can’t stand her, we also sympathize deeply with Isaac, whose parents both died suddenly and left him in the care of a near stranger.

I compared this earlier to The Babadook, but Daddy’s Head seems much less ambiguous as to whether the monster really exists or not; in this movie, both Laura and Robert eventually see the creature, so it’s plain that Isaac either conjured it into reality somehow, or his overwhelming negative emotions attracted it to him, after which it took on the form of his father to get close to him. In that scenario, the creature would be more akin to a demon, I guess, though I favor the first explanation, especially because of how imaginative Isaac is portrayed as, and how weird and detailed his drawings are.

If you like subdued supernatural horror that’s more focused on character and atmosphere than jump scares and gore, then Daddy’s Head should be right up your alley; the creature design is disquieting as shit, don’t get me wrong, but it’s wisely only shown a few times to avoid it losing its creep factor. The movie is currently on Shudder as of January 2025, so give it a whirl and let me know what you thought.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.