WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers
Two years in a row, I have discussed films focusing specifically on mothers and I thought it’s about time that we shone the spotlight on some of the fathers in horror! Especially as it’s Father’s Day in a couple of days for those of us here in the UK. I wanted to firstly take a look at some killer fathers – whether that be for love or just because they have a darkness inside them meaning they just can’t help themselves…
Come to Daddy
This is the second Elijah Wood horror film I’ve covered and even after watching Manic I went into this film unsure about his role – but this time he is actually playing the victim. I feel like I’m about to repeat myself in the same way I have done in several other articles but what I loved about this is film is that it is solely set around the characters of Norval and his father as well as the use of isolation – not only because the father drops Norval’s phone “accidentally” into the sea but also because they are in the middle of nowhere to begin with! Brian, Norval’s father, is rather creepy from the outset and as a viewer I didn’t trust him at all – from the moment he greeted Norval something just did not feel right. This felt like it was going to be much more of a psychological thriller and I guess in some ways it still is when things take a turn for the worse because I guess it would mess with anyone’s head firstly being stuck with what you think is your father’s dead body and then it turns out – the man was never your father! I also loved that the film opens with the Shakespeare quote “The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children” as it seems even Norval’s real father is not a good man and uses him to exact revenge on those who kidnapped him.
The Stepfather
I’ve been meaning to talk about this film for a while, just not in this capacity. That is because this 2009 film is actually a remake of one made in 1987 with the same name. It’s probably really wrong of me but, because of You, I automatically assumed that Penn Badgley would be playing the titular character. He is an integral part to the film as it made me wonder if, when he met Michael, David felt he’d made the wrong decision with the woman he had chosen as his next victim as she has a teenage son instead of 3 young children. I guess this film could be described as more of a psychological thriller than an out and out horror film because firstly it lacks any element of the occult and the fact that it is much more about David keeping up the persona of a good stepfather rather than the murders themselves. Having said that, it bothers me that he lets his mask slip so early when he accidentally gives two names for his daughter in a conversation with Michael. That isn’t me saying that Dylan Walsh doesn’t play a great mix of doting father and sinister killer – but it really should have happened later than half an hour into the film.
Daddy’s Head
As is typical of a British horror film, this is a bit of a slow burner. What was interesting for me from the beginning is how long does the creature terrorize Laura and Isaac for as he is clearly older when we first meet him than he is when he first loses his father. That doesn’t stop certain parts of the film being downright creepy however. Like when the creature first learns to speak and says Isaac’s name – the sound almost reminded me Ju-On! Even the sound of it moving around in the airducts unnerved me a little bit. I worried a little when the creature first appears in the house, not for Isaac and Laura but for Bella the dog. You must all know by now that I care more about the animals in horror films than the people and I honestly thought they were going to kill her off quickly. My only issue is, there’s what feels like a distracting subplot between Laura and a friend of the family, almost an implied affair that took my mind out of the film a couple of times. The one thing I didn’t quite understand about the film was what the creature’s motive was – why does it want to separate Isaac from Laura?
Exhibit A
From the supernatural, to possible the simplest motive for someone to kill – a man pushed to breaking point. The King family have plans to move to a beachside home based off the impending promotion of Andy, father and head of the family. This is what I would describe as a slow-burn found footage film as we watch the gradual breakdown of Andy’s character via his daughter, Judith’s video camera. I spent quite a bit of time in this film wondering why Andy felt he had to lie about the promotion as if they hadn’t actually bought the house yet but then again what I feel we are seeing throughout this film is a man that feels he has to be the one to keep everything together in the household – all of this made worse by his wife’s amusement at the completed pool. Unfortunately, this leads Andy from being the kind, joker of a father that we are introduced to in the beginning to the broken man that attacks his colleague before committing the unspeakable act at the end. In the last 30 minutes, this film really does take you on a bit of a rollercoaster ride. It seems clear at one point, following a heated argument, that Andy is going to kill them all but suddenly it takes this turn and you believe he is only going to kill himself. It still doesn’t end there, and the final scene for me, is pretty unnerving as the found-footage format makes it all look so realistic.
Eyes Without a Face
I wanted to talk about this film a while ago when I discussed French horror but was unfortunately unable to get hold of it. I think it’s always nice in these articles to throw in something a little different and in this case it is different on two levels – it’s black and white as well as being a foreign film. It also depicts, in my opinion anyway, a father doing bad things for a good reason and shows the epitome of a parent’s, let alone a father’s, love for their child given that he will do anything to restore what she has lost. Even though I knew the plot of the story, I believed for so long that the dead girl at the beginning was actually the professor’s daughter and we were seeing how she ended up requiring a new face – even though they mentioned that the incisions to the face were clearly made with a scalpel. What was dark however, is that Professor Génessier allowed another man to believe his daughter was alive so that he could fake Christiane’s death. I guess another way of looking at this film is that the Professor is committing these acts due to his own guilt for putting his daughter in this condition as well as trying to prove his theory on heterografts. The one thing I didn’t realise is that there is only one death in the whole film, outside of the opening scene, and it seems to have been an accident. Warning, the face removal that takes place looks so realistic it may make some viewers feel a little queasy!
Frailty
I guess a few people are going to wonder how this fits as the killer in the end is supposedly Fenton’s brother (I won’t reveal the twist in the tale) but the story takes us further back than that. This is the only film on this list that looks at a dead father’s killings. On first look, all you see is a loving father, doing his best to look after his two sons following the loss of his wife. Maybe he felt that he was still doing that when he brought his sons in on his murders, protecting them from the demons he believed there to be in the world. I had two theories about Fenton and Adam’s father; either he had gone completely crazy and he genuinely believed that he had seen an angel who wanted him to kill these people or he was using the idea in order to kill people just because he wanted to and it was a way of keeping his sons quiet because they believed he was doing God’s work. What’s disturbing about Mr Meiks is that he behaves like what he is doing is completely normal, just like going to work and it’s even darker that he gets his sons involved. Truthfully, the reveal at the end should have been obvious when you look at the behaviour of both Adam and Fenton when they watch their father killing people.
