U.K. filmmaker Benjamin Barfoot is poised to break out at Fantastic Fest — the Austin home to the best in new genre cinema — this year with “Daddy’s Head.” The film, which also heads to Shudder in October in time for Halloween, follows a boy who is visited by an unexplainable creature. And one that seems to mimic a terrifying version of his recently dead father. The cast includes Julia Brown, Rupert Turnbull, Charles Aitken, and Nathaniel Martello-White. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.
Here’s the official synopsis: “In the wake of his father’s untimely death, a young boy is left in the eerie solitude of a sprawling country estate with his newly widowed stepmother. His stepmother, struggling to navigate the overwhelming task of parenthood, grows distant, leaving their fragile bond at risk of collapse. Amidst the growing tension, the boy begins to hear unsettling sounds echoing through the corridors. Soon, he is haunted by the presence of a grotesque creature bearing a disturbingly familiar resemblance to his late father. But as the boy’s warnings are dismissed as the imagination of a grieving child, the sinister entity tightens its grip on their crumbling lives.”
Here’s what Fantastic Fest programmers wrote about the film: “Featuring one of the most disturbing creatures in this year’s lineup and scenes guaranteed to make you jump, director/writer Benjamin Barfoot has expertly crafted an extremely creepy and memorable horror movie you’ll be thinking about every time you turn out the lights … or pass by an air conditioning vent.”
For Barfoot, the film was highly personal. “I developed this story and it was the story of a boy communicating with something that wasn’t his father but wanted to love him. It was a script that I wrote very fast. But it wasn’t until we got into production of it that I realised I had written about the divorce of my parents,” he said in comments shared with IndieWire.
The film will release on Shudder on October 11 following a world premiere at Fantastic Fest this Sunday night, September 22
