Director: Gareth J. James

Screenwriter:  Gareth J. James and Melia Donk

Genre:  Body Horror

Starring: Daniel D'Amico, Katia Taylor, Michael Browning, Colette Samerski, Rob Flanagan

 

Dystopic Films' first feature film production. 'Fatherhood' is a nightmarish dramatized account of one man's fears of parenthood and the moral/physical implications of infidelity. It was initially inspired by the work of David Cronenburg, Dario Argento and Takashi Miike. 

 

Fatherhood differs greatly from other films of the horror genre in that most of the main character's conflict is internal, motivated by his own guilt and sexual anxieties. It was also an attempt to construct a horror film on a microcosmic level, with each of the the central characters suffering some kind of deep psychological affliction. 

Themes include; alcoholism, child abuse, infidelity and madness.

 

Morton Reed is a high school teacher living in a suburban Sydney apartment with his alcoholic wife Cheryl. Cheryl increasingly pressures Morton to try for a baby and as this pressure intensifies, Morton finds himself increasingly pushed into the arms of 16 year old Delilah Paige, with whom he eventually cheats on Cheryl. 

The situation reaches fever pitch when Delilah unexpectedly suffers an unnatural pregnancy at Morton's hands and dies giving birth to a monstrous baby who Morton abandons shortly after. He then returns to Cheryl and attempts to resume his normal life. However; six months later, as Morton is on the verge of becoming a father, Delilah returns from the grave to wreak vengeance on him through his wife.

Fatherhood