Traditionally, father and son relationships in films are portrayed in family dramas with long days fishing, going to a ball game, and bonding over their inevitable similarities. These things are all well and good, but nothing tests the familial bonds as a father and son like being pitted against a supernatural evil or even an evil within.
The horror genre is filled with families being tested, ripped apart, or reunited and there are more than a few movies with father-and-son relationships at their core. Monsters, madness, and dysfunction are at the forefront of these great horror movies about fathers and sons.
Frailty (2001)
This chilling film stars Bill Paxton, making his directorial debut, and Matthew McConaughey as father and son. McConaughey plays an adult version of Paxton's son recounting his childhood to an FBI Agent. Claiming to be Fenton Meiks, he states that his brother Adam has committed suicide and that Adam was in fact the perpetrator behind a rash of murders by a serial killer dubbed "God's Hand." As Fenton's tale unfolds, it becomes clear that an unhappy and unhinged father contributed to the man his son became.
Father Meiks believed God had tasked him with killing demons walking the Earth in human form, and his brother Adam shared his delusion. Fenton takes Agent Doyle to the grave site of all the victims, recounting his memory of events along the way. The film is a taut and frightening thriller, twisting at every turn with an ending that will take anyone watching by surprise.
Pet Sematary (1989)
The 1989 adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name remains a classic terror tale to this day. Louis Creed (Dale Midkiff), his wife Rachel (Denise Crosby), and their two children Ellie (Blaze Berdahl) and Gage (Miko Hughes) move to Maine from Chicago. The Creeds' new home is right by the side of a busy highway, a cause of concern for the parents, but a bigger problem for the family looms deeper in the woods.
Their new neighbor Jud Crandall shows the family the "Pet Sematary" behind their property and from that point on the family's life begins to sour like the ground of the cemetery. Young Gage is killed on the busy highway and buried in the cemetery by Louis. The cursed ground resurrects Gage, and in his grief, Louis refuses to accept that Gage is different, clinging to the memory of his boy and desperate for him to be returned to him. The film features some of the most iconic scary scenes of all time, and Gage is the ultimate evil child.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)
This supernatural horror is directed by André Øvredal and stars Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch as a father and son who work as small-town coroners. After the body of an unidentified woman is found at the scene of a strange homicide, the Sheriff delivers her corpse to Tommy Tilden (Cox) the local coroner to determine what has happened to her. Tommy enlists his son Austin (Hirsch) to help him with the autopsy of Jane Doe.
As they begin their investigation, strange things begin to happen. Lights flicker, the same song keeps playing on the radio, and spectral figures begin appearing. Then there are the strange injuries, markings, and objects in and on Jane Doe, bewildering and frightening the father and son. The film explores the tense relationship between the two men while also examining the love between them in the face of a terrifying and vengeful entity.
The Mist (2007)
Another Stephen King adaptation, Frank Darabont's The Mist is widely regarded as having one of the bleakest endings of all time. Thomas Jane stars as David Drayton, who heads into town with his young son Billy after a severe thunderstorm to secure supplies. Leaving his wife Stephanie at home, David, Billy, and their neighbor Brent head to the local store as a thick mist rolls toward the town. At the store, the mist reaches the town and the emergency alert sounds as a terrified local man crashes into the store warning of something in the chilling mist.
The store becomes a fortress for those that are inside, with David becoming a de facto and unwilling leader of sorts as one of the first to truly understand the horrors outside the walls. David's priority is to keep his son safe from the dangers outside as well as the growing dangers within, as a religious zealot claims they must sacrifice Billy to end the tribulation. The Mist is as heartbreaking as it is horrifying, and remains one of the best King adaptations to date.
What Josiah Saw (2021)
Vincent Grashaw's dark psychological horror film is the embodiment of the phrase "a bad time." What Josiah Saw tells the story of a dysfunctional family split apart, each dealing with their own individual traumas before coming together at the family farmhouse of the patriarch Josiah (Robert Patrick). Son Thomas (Scott Haze) still lives at the old family home with Josiah, an overbearing, abusive, and cruel man. Meanwhile, ex-con brother Eli (Nick Stahl) is suspected of kidnapping a 9-year-old girl, and sister Mary (Kelli Garner) is desperate to adopt a child with her husband (Tony Hale) but is clearly not a well woman.
The entire film is a disturbing, grueling, and unpleasant exploration of the family trauma ingrained in every member. The thread throughout is the relationship between Thomas and his father, the former constantly trying to please the latter and getting nothing but abuse in turn. What Josiah Saw is one of the bleakest films of the last few years, displaying the exact opposite of healthy familial bonds and one of the most troubled father-son relationships in recent cinema.