Daddy's Head

 Young Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) never had the best of relationships with his stepmother Laura (Julia Brown) - it was James (Charles Aitken), the head of the family, whom they both loved and held things together; After he passes away in the aftermath of a car accident, Isaac and Laura start pulling further apart. And that's even before a shape-shifting monster wearing Daddy's Head comes a-calling at their remote modernist home and starts trying to... turn Isaac against all other grown ups? It's not really clear.

 It's a punishingly slow film, one that doesn't flesh out its characters nor its scares, leaving nearly every scene feeling a little hollow, a little unsatisfying. Very little happens, which could be excused if there was any heft to the emotions or themes on display, but the characters and their relationships are all basic and fairly schematic. The script, by director Benjamin Barfoot has some good writing and the makings of a compelling enough situation, but fails to bring it to life or take it anywhere interesting - everything feels perfunctory, and it doesn't help that it often casts its protagonists as severely unlikable, empathy-free jerks. The acting, while fine, is fully in sync with the film's overriding dourness.

 The direction at least is on-point, with some beautiful cinematography from Miles Ridgway. The set design - especially a forest stick fort to end all forest stick forts - is excellent, as is the creature, a creepy CGI creation which remains frustratingly elusive all the way to the end. The glimpses we get are extremely effective, but it all builds up to a confrontation that is almost comically underwhelming. 

 File this one under: Handsome, slow-burn elevated horror with very little to say. A little above Antlers,  maybe, but not a lot. Cool monster, though; Wish they'd had the money or wherewithal to do a little more with it.