When I tell you Daddy's Head is a horror movie about a young boy left to live with his stepmother when his father dies as a result of a car accident, you'll probably jump to your own conclusions. Stepmothers have gotten a particularly bad rap in fiction over the centuries, so much so that the noun is more often than not prefaced by "wicked." As such, you probably think this is another story of an evil stepmother trying to get rid of the burden of the kid she's been saddled with, and you might even suspect that she was responsible for her husband's death. But writer/director Benjamin Barfoot subverts all our ingrained expectations of stepmother figures in fiction by presenting us with one who is very much the protagonist rather than the antagonist.

That would be Laura (Julia Brown), who is left widowed when her husband James (Charles Aitken) perishes in the aforementioned automobile accident. She's also left with a decision to make. Does she become the legal guardian of her (roughly 10 years old) stepson Isaac (Rupert Turnbull) or hand him over to the state and an uncertain future? James was an architect, and Laura has inherited the plush modernist home he built for his family. Surrounded by misty woods and with its own miniature lake, it resembles a 21st century version of the gothic mansion of Jack Clayton's The Innocents. Struggling to communicate their mutual grief, Laura and Isaac spend the days following their loss avoiding one another at opposite ends of the house. Isaac confines himself to his room and immerses himself in the dopamine distraction of a handheld video game while recovering alcoholic Laura drinks wine until she passes out on the living room couch each night.

After burying James in a family plot on the grounds of the home, Laura and Isaac are disturbed that night by what seems to be a strange creature in the house. Chased away by their dog, the "creature" escapes before Laura and Isaac can get a good look at it. But then they find an elaborate wooden structure in the woods that may have been constructed by James (he was an architect after all), but looks suspiciously like a witch's home from an old folk tale. When Isaac becomes obsessed with the idea that his father has returned in the form of the mysterious creature, Laura begins to fear that she may not be safe around the boy.

In turning our expectations of its orphaned child/widowed stepmother dynamic upside down, Barfoot forces us to consider the inherent misogyny of centuries of portrayals of stepmothers as evil gold-diggers. When we hear of attractive young women like Laura marrying older wealthy men, we too often jump to the conclusion that "she's only in it for the money." We never see any flashbacks of Laura and James' life together, but it's made explicitly clear that being left with a lavish home and a considerable fortune is of no consolation to the devastated Laura. Barfoot leaves it to his leading lady to convey Laura's grief, which Brown makes palpable in her sympathetic performance. But while Laura isn't the wicked stepmother we might expect, neither is she portrayed as a one-dimensional angel. She wants to do right by Isaac but she's aware of her own flaws, and as she succumbs back to her alcoholic ways we find ourselves wondering if it might be best for Isaac to get away from her.

There's a tragic element to this supernatural tale that recalls some of the more grounded work of Clive Barker, while the "creature" wouldn't be out of place in a Hellraiser movie, a nightmarish creation that resembles a leather-clad gimp with a dead man's face (the titular "Daddy's Head"). Isaac and Laura are both suffering in their own ways, and yet both are torn apart by the creature's manipulation when they should be sharing their sadness.

Barfoot makes great use of his striking setting, turning the huge glass windows of the house into screens upon which are projected nightmares that eventually begin to bleed into reality. The isolation of their home only adds to the tension between Isaac and Laura, as does the understandable disbelief of various visitors, including social workers and Robert (Nathaniel Martello-White), a helpful family friend who may have an ulterior motive for spending time with Laura.

It's the central performance of Brown that really makes Daddy's Head work. The Scottish actress bears an uncanny resemblance to Isabelle Adjani, possessing the same big expressive blue eyes, which work overtime here to convey Laura's increasingly troubled and paranoid state of mind. Barfoot is able to create an unsettling mood by simply having noise occur offscreen while his camera focusses its gaze on Brown's eyes as they fill in the creepy gaps in our imagination. Though only briefly glimpsed, Aitken is horrifying as the creature, which he plays as though enduring some unimaginable torment. We'd all like to spend more time with those loved ones we've lost, but there's nothing more terrifying and tragic than the thought of them returning as something not quite human, an idea Barfoot mines to unsettling effect here.

Daddy's Head is available on Shudder.

Directed by: Benjamin Barfoot

Starring: Julia Brown, Rupert Turnbull, Charles Aitken, Nathaniel Martello-White