Daddy's Head Ending Explanation

The original horror film The Shudder Dad's head was met with acclaim upon release on October 11, hailed as a deeply disturbing portrait of the horrors of grief. The horror-focused streamer has earned a reputation for releasing several highly noteworthy films under its name, and Dad's head is the latest in their already strong line. The film follows a boy and his stepmother, grieving the loss of their beloved patriarch, who become targets of a mysterious shape-shifting entity. It attracted attention for its eerie atmosphere, powerful performances and terrifying creature design. After a mania fueled by grief (and monsters) threatens to tear this already fractured family apart, writer/director Benjamin Barfoot delivers a surprisingly solid finale.

Dad's head unfolds almost like a dark fairy tale, centering on a young boy named Isaac (Rupert Turnbull), who has just lost his father James (Charles Aitken) in a devastating car accident, having lost his mother several years earlier. James' new, younger wife Laura (Julia Brown) tries to comfort Isaac, but finds it hard to see her own grief as she spends her nights in a wine-drunk haze. Isaac is soon visited by a strange creature that takes a creepy approach to his dead father's face and tries to lure the distraught boy into the woods and inside a strange geometric wooden structure. Convinced that his father has returned in a new form, Isaac almost gets caught up in whatever the creature's plans are for him.

Climax of daddy's head

At the climax daddy's head Laura finds herself on edge after the family dog ​​turns up dead and her helpful friend Robert (Nathaniel Martello-White) is attacked and nearly killed when Isaac lures him into the creature's lair. Finally deciding that she cannot be the mother that Isaac needs, she decides to give up custody of the boy. Shortly after, the creature breaks into Isaac's room as Laura catches her in the act and is briefly knocked unconscious as the creature slams the door shut.

Isaac then finally sees the monster for what it is and calls out to Laura for help. Recovering from a head injury, Laura ends up in Isaac's room and, finding a kitchen knife that went missing earlier in the film, stabs the monster several times, sending it running. The scene ends with Isaac screaming Laura's name as she stares blankly in shock.

Dad's head moves coda

Instead of showing the audience the immediate aftermath of the attack, Barfoot instead shifts the action entirely, with a young man (James Harper-Jones) sitting in the remains of Isaac's childhood bedroom, looking up at the air duct where he encountered the creature. Next, the young man walks through the woods near the house, finding the dilapidated ruins of the creature's lair, and finally goes inside. In the inner chamber, he finds an image of Isaac's father and the strange faceless skeleton of a creature that apparently died from its injuries. He studies the empty space where the face should be, then leaves. He finally goes back inside and knocks on his mother's bedroom door, asking if he can come in. When his mom wakes up, viewers see that it's a slightly older version of Laura, meaning that the young man we're following is actually Isaac, and the two have stayed together after a disturbing ordeal.

For a film dealing with such frightening, surreal imagery and heavy subject matter, this final scene is a surprisingly reassuring and even optimistic coda to the story. This means that Isaac and Laura bonded over their horrific experiences, and Laura was able to find the deep wells of strength she needed to save Isaac as well as be his mother. Instead of being torn apart by an entity that took advantage of his grief, Isaac seems to have grown into a young man who bears the scars of his experience but doesn't let it destroy or define him. The significance of the creature's skeleton fits into the film's larger musings on grief. It never goes away, but over time its influence on a person's life can diminish. This allows Isaac to see the monster for what it really was: not his father as he may have hoped, but a faceless being that was trying to take his form for its own purposes.

The bare part of the leaves Dad's head open to interpretation. The monster's true intentions towards Isaac are never fully revealed, and the impact of the experience on Isaac's later life is only hinted at. Through its quiet, hopeful denouement, the film makes it clear that grief and loss are inevitable, but that everyone has the ability to choose how to move on from the experience. Will they let it define them or integrate it and move on?

After such a relentlessly dark and scary film, Barfoot ended the story with a ray of hope. In recent years, many horror films have explored the theme of grief, and many of them, like Hereditary or Pet Sematary, seeing their characters consumed by it. Dad's head manages to stand out by choosing a different path, where grief can both unite and divide.