BODY BODY BODY
Main Cast: Christopher Rygh, Cora Kaufman
Director: Jordan Downey
How many times does it have to be said you don’t mess with a father and his daughter. You just don’t!
Jordan Downey’s 2018 movie THE HEAD HUNTER tells the story of a father (Christopher Rygh), a medieval warrior, out for revenge after his daughter is killed by a monster. He gets that revenge by killing every monster he comes across and sticking their severed heads on a spike in his small cabin. Soon he’s got a wall full of heads, all the monsters except the one.
And then he finds it. He kills it. He takes its severed head into his cabin.
Part of his ritual after killing another beast is to visit his daughter’s grave and leave her something. But this time, while he’s gone, the severed head of the beast that killed her … but I don’t want to ruin it for you.
I will backtrack a second, though, and say that many of the beasts the father fights are pretty brutal, and he often returns home beat up and bloody, sometimes mauled. Luckily, he’s got a black goo he keeps in a jar that heals his wounds. And could probably be used to bring a dead creature back to life… But I’ve already said too much.
I found this movie by searching for “the best horror movie under 90 minutes streaming free with ads on the Fandango app”. Is it the BEST horror movie? I have my doubts; there are a TON of horror movies on that app. But I did enjoy it and its 72-minute run time.
Rygh carries the movie in a mostly silent, mostly solo performance. The film is beautifully-shot (co-writer Kevin Stewart has nearly 70 credits as a cinematographer) with gorgeous mountainous scenery. And it never gets bogged down in too many side-quests. Downey and Stewart (both from V/H/S BEYOND) had a story they wanted to tell and they told that story.
The effects, handled by Downey himself, were excellent and gory and helped sell the world the movie was building, one full of dozens of different kinds of monsters. A lot of times in a movie set in a time period like this, I have to laugh because I know just off set, or maybe even in a pocket of their costume, these actors have a cell phone just waiting for them. That thought never once crossed my mind watching THE HEAD HUNTER because everything looked so genuine, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all to find out Rygh had never even seen a phone, cell or otherwise. That’s a testament to the work Downey and company did to make this movie look as authentic as they could. Kudos all around and high recommendations for this one.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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