'Daddy's Head's disturbing ending, explained
A breakdown of the ending of "Daddy's Head" on Shudder. Was the creature real? What did the final sequence with the skeleton mean? Let's unpack.
So, what in the sweet heck did we just watch?
A family literally being haunted by the scuttling, Frankenstein-esque form of their dead loved one? One giant metaphor for grief? Or some combination of the two?
Despite its amusingly ridiculous title, Daddy's Head is a disturbing (and sometimes confusing) movie about bereavement and a family trying to repair itself after an unimaginable loss. It's also a film that leaves us with questions, so we've had a go at breaking them down here.
What's Daddy's Head about?
Okay, let's recap: James (Charles Aitken) is in a horrific car accident, and when he dies from his injuries, he leaves behind his young son Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) and his wife Laura (Julia Brown). While they're trying to come to terms with this shocking tragedy, and while Laura is deciding whether or not to become Isaac's legal guardian, strange things start to happen around the house.
Their dog chases an unseen animal out through the window. Smoke billows through the woods surrounding the house, even though there's no clear fire. Isaac begins to have visions of his dad — albeit a changed version of him — talking to him from the forest and an air vent in his room.
As tensions rise and Laura becomes convinced she can't handle being Isaac's guardian, the creature's influence over the boy starts to grow.
What's the creature haunting them, and is it real?
We finally get a clear view of the monster at the end of the movie, and it does indeed look like Isaac's father. But it's a nightmarish version of him, with the changing face mutated and twisted, the limbs distorted and spider-like. But although the thing looks like a bad dream, the film implies that it's not purely psychological; three different characters see the monster, and it's able to do real-world damage. In short, it's not purely in Isaac's mind.
But whether or not it's a product of Isaac's mind is a different question. The creature's appearance is the first clue. We know that Isaac is an imaginative child, as it's repeated throughout the film, and we know he likes to draw monsters as a hobby. But when Isaac visits his dying father in the hospital, James is covered head to toe in bandages. Isaac never sees the extent of James' injuries before his death, so Isaac's mind conjures up something terrible.
Although the movie leaves the monster's nature up to interpretation, our best guess is that the thing is a physical manifestation of Isaac's horror and grief at the sudden loss of his father. It's all of his too-big-to-process emotions — not just bereavement and shock, but also suspicion and mistrust of those around him — brought to life. It turns him against Laura, and it makes him want to lash out.
But, crucially, as we see at the movie's end, it can also be overcome.
What's the deal with that skeleton?
For all its horror, Daddy's Head has a happy ending.
After Laura has saved Isaac from the creature and stabbed it to death, we flash forward to an older Isaac (James Harper-Jones) going back to his childhood home. He goes into the woods outside his house and visits the weird little wooden structure that acted as the creature's nest when he was a child. Inside, he finds a picture of himself and his dad, and then he sees a skeleton on the ground with the skull split open down the middle. Older Isaac returns back to his new home and wakes up Laura, who he now calls "Mum."
This isn't made explicit, but our best guess is the skeleton belongs to the creature. Isaac finding its remains shows that the creature is indeed dead, and while the horrible emotions he experienced after his dad died are still there, they can no longer hurt him in the same way as they once did.
Perhaps Laura risking her own life to save Isaac from the monster was enough to prove to him that she loved him and he could trust her — and it was ultimately this realisation that killed the thing haunting him.
