My latest triple feature proved to be pretty suspenseful, disturbing, satisfying, and a whole lot of commentary on fractured families. Let’s get right to them.
DADDY’S HEAD (2024)
This is a goodie for anyone who grew up on slow burns from the 1970s, with the creature being presented in quick flashes, shadows, and blurs instead of full Monty madness, making its fleeting appearance all the creepier. The film also doesn’t fill in all the blanks when all is said and done.
After his father dies following a car accident, a boy is left under the guardianship of his stepmother. He misses his dad tremendously, but I personally wouldn’t want my dad back if this is the way he looked the last time I saw him…
The tension gets under your skin as weird things begin happening in the forest behind their house. They notice smoke billowing out from the trees, but no fire is found.
Blue lights flicker through the windows at night. A figure starts appearing outside. Their dog barks furiously at something unseen.
And eventually, something scurries through the house. Eek! This is such a great scene, because the stepmom holds the son back while screaming for the dog to come back and not chase the creature. As a super protective doggy daddy, I felt what she was fearing about the dog’s fate at that moment.
I’m just going to say, if you are dog death sensitive, you might have to leave the room at one point in this movie.
The son begins to hear his dad talking to him at night, he’s beckoned into the woods, he finds a visually stunning branch structure that his stepmom prevents him from going in, and there’s a terrifying vent scene in the house.
It’s all kinds of sad, because the son longs to have his father back so much that he looks past how freaky all this shit is and continues to be drawn to whatever is posing as his father.
The final confrontation with the creature is the big money shot, and it’s a great scene, but like I said before, you really will be left not knowing exactly how and why this thing in the woods materialized to begin with, because it’s definitely not a metaphorical grief monster, thankfully.
OTHER (2025)
This one really makes a good double feature with Daddy’s Head. Another slow burn with a whole lot of eerie tension and suspense, it’s about a woman’s relationship with her mother and some sort of creature creeping around the house.
It’s also perhaps a bit too complicated for its own good, so the main story gets lost in plot elements like a drone, security cameras, an underground bunker, video monitors, VHS tapes, and even a Speak and Spell.
After a spooky opening clip—someone in a mask exploring the woods at night while filming and talking about a kid found with his face missing—we see a woman leave her house wearing a mask in search of something in the woods.
Then we meet our main woman and her man—or, at least, his ass. That’s because the only face we see in this movie is that of the main woman. The few other characters’ faces are intentionally obscured.
The main woman is called home after her estranged mother’s gruesome death. She ends up trapped at the house with something lurking in the shadows. She also keeps seeing a kid on a bicycle wearing a mask and telling her to hide her face. Eek!
Slowly but surely, we learn through videotapes she watches that she was a beauty contestant when she was young and that her mother was very abusive. Which begs two questions—why did her mother film herself being abusive, and why would the main girl want to watch the videos and relive those moments?
In between the thrilling sequences, you have to pay attention to the little details to understand what transpired in the past and how it explains what the creature is. Even if you do figure it out, by the end of the movie you will feel like a whole lot of details were left out, resulting in quite a few unanswered questions. Personally, I’m not sure if this monster was material, metaphorical, or a bit of both.
KILLER THERAPY (2019)
This is more of a portrait of a mentally ill boy than it is a full-fledged horror flick, but it really does draw you in thanks to great performances, dark themes, and appearances by several horror veterans.
A couple adopts a daughter only to quickly discover their teenage son hates her. Like, this kid is a psycho, played to sadistic and sinister perfection by the young actor. Not to mention, the father is played by Thom Mathew’s of Friday the 13th VI and Return of the Living Dead parts 1 and 2.
The main boy is constantly jumping from one therapist to another (including horror queens PJ Soles and Adrienne King), and it is revealed without any graphic detail that one male therapist sexually abuses him. This movie is seriously dark.
It’s truly unnerving watching the family fall apart as the son begins to lash out, eventually getting violent. He’s sent to an institution for six years, and when he returns home, things are only worse. His family doesn’t trust him, and before long he begins killing. However, this isn’t a slasher. The kills are infrequent, spontaneous, and end in him being devastated about what he’s just done. It’s really kind of tragic and heartbreaking.
Another cool aspect of the film is that Daeg Faerch, the original young Michael Myers from Rob Zombie’s Halloween, bullies the main boy in school and ends up doing a sort of role reversal scene of the one in which he gets back at a bully in Halloween. In fact, while the plots are different, I wouldn’t be surprised if Zombie’s film inspired this one.
With fifteen minutes left to go, the main guy (now in a really bad and distracting, long-haired wig) totally snaps and goes on a revenge killing spree. He also suddenly covers his face in makeup for no clear reason and ends up looking like the double for Jennifer Beals dancing to Laura Branigan’s “Imagination” in that Flashdance scene at the club.
The kills come fast, furious, and in quick edits, except Adrienne King, who gets a great, suspenseful build-up scene…with no payoff! WTF? She also gets the best horror lighting in the whole movie.
