Dis­cov­er this medieval mon­ster movie inspired by Army of Darkness

“Shhh, it’s okay,” the Father (Christo­pher Rygh) reas­sures his sleepy young Daugh­ter (Cora Kauf­man) in her makeshift tent of twigs, at the begin­ning of The Head Hunter. Some­thing fero­cious has invad­ed the perime­ter of their snowy encamp­ment, but the Father, a beard­ed hulk of a man, has just fought and slain it in an off-screen bat­tle, heard but not seen. What is vis­i­ble is the copi­ous blood on the Father’s sword and indeed on his hands, and now on the fur that cov­ers his Daugh­ter. ​“I always thought I could pro­tect her,” he is next heard say­ing in voiceover. ​“What took her from me is still out there. Now I wait for it to return.”

The Head Hunter is a film of ellipses and after­maths. Just as we do not see the crea­ture that the Father fights at the start, or the mur­der of the Daugh­ter by some­thing else, we also do not wit­ness the many oth­er fights of this pro­fes­sion­al mon­ster slay­er. Instead, we see their con­se­quences: the hor­rif­ic, gap­ing wounds that he bears on his body (but quick­ly cures), and the sev­ered heads of the van­quished crea­tures that he places on stakes inside his stone cottage.

In this unnamed North­ern coun­try, dur­ing a Dark Age where myth­ic mon­sters still walk the land, the Father leads a soli­tary life away from the Cas­tle com­mu­ni­ty. He spends his time repair­ing his armour, brew­ing a spe­cial salve that mirac­u­lous­ly heals even his most griev­ous injuries, and vis­it­ing his Daughter’s grave. And when­ev­er a dis­tant horn sounds an alarm to sum­mon him, he heads out to take down the next ungod­ly threat to the king­dom. When the mon­ster that killed his daugh­ter does even­tu­al­ly return, he takes its head – only for that head, now mag­i­cal­ly revived, to go on a des­per­ate search for a new body.

Direct­ed and edit­ed by Jor­dan Downey, who also co-wrote the screen­play with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Kevin Stew­art, The Head Hunter is a medieval mon­ster movie which makes a virtue of its micro-bud­get. For by focus­ing more on the inner work­ings of its protagonist’s day-to-day exis­tence than on the exter­nal spec­ta­cle of his slay­ings (which the film could nev­er have afford­ed to show any­way), it comes across as a close study in psychodrama.

Played by Rygh (in his first lead role) with a gruff inten­si­ty, the Father is an effi­cient preda­tor who hard­ly seems more human than the crea­tures he faces. Holed up in a hov­el whose filth you can prac­ti­cal­ly smell, this social exile talks only to the dead and lives only to kill. And although his sto­ry seems very sim­ple, he leaves us won­der­ing whether he might in fact be less loy­al knight than rogue mur­der­er inhab­it­ing the con­fused and guilt-rid­den per­spec­tive of his own con­fused head­space, and strug­gling not so much with mon­sters ​“out there” as with inner demons that threat­en to take over the last ves­tiges of his humanity.

Ellipses are just parts miss­ing from a narrative’s body, demand­ing sub­sti­tu­tion. We do not know much about the Father’s back­ground (or indeed what hap­pened to the Moth­er), but we do know that he is now a lit­er­al ser­i­al killer, and what is more that he col­lects grue­some tro­phies from his slay­ings. We can­not be sure how the Father’s daugh­ter died, but we do know that when we last see her, he is kneel­ing over her supine body with bloody hands.

When the crea­ture that killed her lat­er digs up her head­less skele­ton to use as its own body, and the Father – after beg­ging her for­give­ness – decap­i­tates the mon­ster from her, might this addled war­rior not just be restag­ing an unspeak­able act that he has already com­mit­ted on his Daughter’s body? If the killer crea­ture is just a con­struct of the Father’s trau­ma­tised, psy­chot­ic mind, then ulti­mate­ly The Head Hunter finds a way to lit­er­alise this notion, and to show the mon­strous head that rules the man’s hulk­ing frame.

So there are (at least) two ways of inter­pret­ing the Father’s tragedy. On the one hand, it is a straight sto­ry of a venge­ful mon­ster hunter meet­ing his messy end. On the oth­er, it is a more inter­nalised, unre­li­able rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a mass mur­der­er invent­ing fan­ci­ful sce­nar­ios to avoid con­fronting his deeds and him­self, until even­tu­al­ly he yields ful­ly to the con­trol of the mon­ster within.

The film’s prin­ci­pal inter­text, the Evil Dead tril­o­gy, sup­ports either one of these read­ings. Like Sam Raimi’s films, The Head Hunter fea­tures a cab­in in the woods, a bound book of mon­sters, and demon­ic belea­guer­ment – and the Father is a pre­cur­sor to Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams, sim­i­lar­ly sur­viv­ing extreme bod­i­ly dam­age, and sim­i­lar­ly hav­ing to do bat­tle with end­less mon­sters, includ­ing a buried, decap­i­tat­ed loved one who has risen from her makeshift grave.

Yet the demons that Ash must fight are often exten­sions of his per­son, be it the pos­sessed hand that he cuts off his own arm in Evil Dead II, or the ​‘Evil Ash’ dop­pel­gänger that proves his ulti­mate neme­sis in Army of Dark­ness, which like Downey’s film has a medieval set­ting. The Father too may be mere­ly in con­flict with him­self and his own frac­tur­ing psy­che. A pan­icky scene near the end in a dark tun­nel evokes Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, anoth­er film about a psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly dis­turbed man who exter­nalis­es his inner con­flicts as elab­o­rate para­noid plots.

One oth­er allu­sion here sug­gests the Father’s sta­tus as an ur-slash­er – a psy­cho-killer avant la let­tre. For in the Father’s cot­tage there is a chair that he has fash­ioned from the bones, teeth and skin of both ani­mals and his vic­tims – a chair just like the ones dec­o­rat­ing the slaughtermen’s home in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Accord­ing­ly, the Father is both hero and vil­lain of this ambigu­ous fable which, like a head­less corpse, requires a cer­tain sup­ple­men­ta­tion for its prop­er iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Any way you piece it togeth­er and read between its scenes, though, Downey and his skele­ton crew have craft­ed a rich­ly atmos­pher­ic and relent­less­ly dark saga of evil incor­po­rat­ed. This grit­ty, gory labour of love is far more than ok.

The Head Hunter is avail­able on Blu-ray from 101 Films on 12 April.