{"id":1036,"date":"2025-06-20T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/?p=1036"},"modified":"2025-06-12T14:47:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T14:47:13","slug":"fathers-day-from-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/2025\/06\/20\/fathers-day-from-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Father’s Day From Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WARNING:<\/mark> <\/strong>This Article May Contain Spoilers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two years in a row, I have discussed films focusing specifically on mothers and I thought it\u2019s about time that we shone the spotlight on some of the fathers in horror! Especially as it\u2019s Father\u2019s 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 \u2013 whether that be for love or just because they have a darkness inside them meaning they just can\u2019t help themselves\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come to Daddy<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              This is the second Elijah Wood horror film I\u2019ve covered and even after watching Manic <\/em>I went into this film unsure about his role \u2013 but this time he is actually playing the victim. I feel like I\u2019m 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 \u2013 not only because the father drops Norval\u2019s phone \u201caccidentally\u201d into the sea but also because they are in the middle of nowhere to begin with! Brian, Norval\u2019s father, is rather creepy from the outset and as a viewer I didn\u2019t trust him at all \u2013 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\u2019s head firstly being stuck with what you think is your father\u2019s dead body and then it turns out \u2013 the man was never your father! I also loved that the film opens with the Shakespeare quote \u201cThe sins of the father are to be laid upon the children\u201d <\/em>as it seems even Norval\u2019s real father is not a good man and uses him to exact revenge on those who kidnapped him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Stepfather<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              I\u2019ve 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\u2019s probably really wrong of me but, because of You, <\/em>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\u2019d 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\u2019t me saying that Dylan Walsh doesn\u2019t play a great mix of doting father and sinister killer \u2013 but it really should have happened later than half an hour into the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daddy\u2019s Head<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              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\u2019t stop certain parts of the film being downright creepy however. Like when the creature first learns to speak and says Isaac\u2019s name \u2013 the sound almost reminded me Ju-On<\/em>! 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\u2019s 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\u2019t quite understand about the film was what the creature\u2019s motive was \u2013 why does it want to separate Isaac from Laura?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exhibit A<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              From the supernatural, to possible the simplest motive for someone to kill \u2013 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\u2019s character via his daughter, Judith\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 \u2013 all of this made worse by his wife\u2019s 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\u2019t end there, and the final scene for me, is pretty unnerving as the found-footage format makes it all look so realistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eyes Without a Face<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              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\u2019s always nice in these articles to throw in something a little different and in this case it is different on two levels \u2013 it\u2019s 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\u2019s, let alone a father\u2019s, 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\u2019s daughter and we were seeing how she ended up requiring a new face \u2013 even though they mentioned that the incisions to the face were clearly made with a scalpel. What was dark however, is that Professor G\u00e9nessier allowed another man to believe his daughter was alive so that he could fake Christiane\u2019s 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\u2019t 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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frailty<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

              I guess a few people are going to wonder how this fits as the killer in the end is supposedly Fenton\u2019s brother (I won\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s work. What\u2019s disturbing about Mr Meiks is that he behaves like what he is doing is completely normal, just like going to work and it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARNING: This Article May Contain Spoilers Two years in a row, I have discussed films focusing specifically on mothers and I thought it\u2019s about time that we shone the spotlight on some of the fathers in horror! Especially as it\u2019s Father\u2019s Day in a couple of days for those of us here in the UK. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leoloves.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}