Father Knows Best: Our Favorite Horror Movie Dads

​Being a father can be a tough job sometimes. Providing for your family and raising kids is hard enough without demons, ghosts, serial killers, or an apocalypse attempting to sabotage your parenting skills. For horror movie dads, any day that ends with the kids alive and unpossessed should count as a win. In honor of Father’s Day this weekend our writing team shared some of their favorite horror movie dads. 

Josh Lambert from Insidious

In this modern haunted house classic that spawned a franchise, Patrick Wilson headlines as Josh, a loving husband and father of three. Having recently moved into a new home, a freak accident places his oldest son into a coma. From there, the malevolent pranks you expect from a haunt begins, but where Josh differs from many dads in these types of films is that he’s more than willing to swallow his pride and move the family out of the house almost immediately. He’s inclined to embrace the bizarre and supernatural if it means saving his son, Dalton, from The Further, the astral realm that he and his son share a connection to. Even when Josh finds out that a more sinister force is after him (and has been for years), he doesn’t hesitate to go into the belly of the beast and save his son from the demon that took him. In the sequel, while stuck in The Further, Josh continues looking for a way to get home, even fighting off against spirits that plague his family at different points in time. You can’t get more devoted than Josh, and though the series focused away from his character in subsequent entries, Wilson will return and make his directorial debut in Chapter 5. Where the series goes from here, is anyone’s guess, but Josh will be seeing Dalton off to college and who knows what possibilities lie there.
-Alex Ayres

Steve Freeling from Poltergeist

For me, Craig T. Nelson is the original horror dad.  Poltergeist shook me to my feeble core when I first watched it at a young age, but the spirit of the family that wouldn’t quit always left a loving mark.  Nelson as Steve Freeling is the literal anchor of his family.  When his wife and children express concern over things happening around them, he takes them seriously.  He is first to leap into danger to rescue Robbie (Oliver Robins) from a tree trying to devour him, or into the unfinished swimming pool to find Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke).  As his family comes undone, so does he – getting progressively disheveled and unkempt as his family explodes further apart.  It breaks his heart to have to even pretend to discipline his daughter, only being able to do so as an act of saving her from being trapped in another realm.  Proving himself as the father who holds the family together, he holds the rope which allows his wife Diane (JoBeth Williams) to rescue their daughter and bring the family back together.  The final moment of Nelson ripping the TV out of the hotel room has always felt triumphant and a full summation of who his character is.  In this writer’s humble opinion, Craig T. Nelson walked so Patrick Wilson could run.
-Carissa Jean Mares
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Lt. Don Thompson from 
​A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise

Metaphorically speaking, any parent would kill for their kids, and when it came to Freddy Krueger, many of the Springwood parents did just that, including Lt. Thompson, who covered up the murder and buried the body of the dead child killer, twice. Played stoically by the late John Saxon, Thompson is protective of his only daughter, Nancy, even if he’s not always in her life (the divorce being downplayed to where you may not notice it on the first watch). And even though he uses Nancy as bait to catch who he thinks killed his daughter’s friend, he does make the right choice in the end, it just takes him until Part 3 to correct his mistakes. Above all, Thompson is a good cop who tries to be logical and reassuring to protect his town and his loved ones.
-Alex Ayres
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​Chucky from Child's Play

Let's just get ahead of this now – Chucky is an awful father. Anyone with a passing familiarity of the Child's Play series doesn't need me to list off his litany of personal problems. He does, however, perfectly represent one famous dad trope – frustration. During a particularly chaotic scene in the oft-overlooked Seed of Chucky, he has a hilariously memorable freakout over how far his life (and franchise) has drifted, much to the confusion of his intended victims. With the madness of 2020 still fresh in our minds, Chucky's inevitable trip out “for cigarettes” is at least a little relatable. But he is still a scumbag so it's absolute chef's kiss when his non-binary kid chops up his deadbeat ass with an axe.
-C.J. Duke
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​Man from The Road

Viggo Mortensen’s unnamed father in this post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy adaptation travels the wasteland with his son after an unspecified catastrophe. He has one thing on his mind; keep his son safe from the gangs of cannibals in this forsaken land, but packing two bullets for a mercy kill should they find all hope is lost for them. In midst of all this hardship and scavenging, the Man is willing to do little things to make his boy happy, like sharing a portion of their rations with a near-blind man they meet along the way, or giving him what might be the last can of Coke in the land. He’s not perfect, but he tries to be the best role model for his son in the face of extinction, and continues to be strong for him even while he’s dying from an infected leg wound. Though the Man doesn’t make it to the end, he parts with every possession but the person that matters most.
-Alex Ayres

​Dad from Frailty

In Frailty, Bill Paxton plays a devoted single father to two young sons. It is obvious through his actions that he loves his children deeply and wants to keep them safe. One night the father receives a vision from God telling him demons are masquerading as ordinary people and it is his job to seek them out and kill them. It’s at this point that the dad makes the questionable decision of having his children help him slay the demons. While quality time is important for any family, kidnapping and killing people who are supposedly demons is not the most appropriate family activity. As the older son begins to doubt his father’s mission from God, the father’s behavior becomes more fanatical and destructive to their relationship. As with most parent/child relationships, the truth is more complicated than originally suspected and children often only see part of the story. By the end of this film it’s obvious that despite everything that has occurred, the father always did the best he could and always had his sons’ best intentions at heart. 
​-Maureen Trinh

​Captain Spaulding from Rob Zombie’s Firefly Trilogy

The late, great Sid Haig gives his career defining performance as Captain Spaulding, aka Cutter, aka Johnny Lee Johns. He’s a rarity in the horror genre, as he’s a dad, a step-dad, and a moderately successful business man running his tourist trap. Though left ambiguous in the first entry, House of 1,000 Corpses, it is later revealed that he’s the biological father of Sheri Moon Zombie’s Baby Firefly in The Devil’s Rejects (the most well-known and financially successful of the series). Spaulding is a vulgar clown with rotten teeth and a love of John Wayne movies, who will go out of his way for his daughter and his step-son, Otis. He’s the most popular character, but the least evil of the group, with no on screen kills. He’s the man with a plan when things turn sour, knowing a safe place to hide when the police are on the remaining family’s trail. And when they’re captured by the vengeful Sheriff, who plans to torture them for their crimes, Spaulding is more than willing to take the brunt of the abuse as a means of sparing his kids, even if he knows they’re guilty. Not to mention, he has the best dad jokes in any horror film, hands down.
-Alex Ayers

Gabe Wilson from Us

​There’s a whole lot to love about Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke) in Jordan Peele’s 2019 horror film Us, and I’m not just saying that because we share the same first name. I mean, what’s a father supposed to do when placed in a deadly cat and mouse game orchestrated by a gang of doppelgänger’s hellbent on ruining the family vacation? You do what Gabe does. You DAD UP. And even though you may not know what that means, you protect your family the best way you know how. A baseball bat. Witty remarks. Chest-puffed threats. Baiting yourself. These are just a few of the ways Gabe improvises in an attempt to steer his family from being usurped by the creepy lookalikes. He’s not the brightest, he’s not the strongest, it’s clear he doesn’t have all the money, and at times he’s getting absolutely worked by the bad version of himself, but hell, he’s a dad. He steps up and he tries while ensuring his family is aware of him doing so. If that’s not what being a father is all about, I don’t know what the hell is.
-Gabe Braxton

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