Daughter (2022) Oppressive & Impressive Micro Budget Thriller which questions the family unit (Review)

Masterfully crafting terror in vast and small spaces, Daughter seems to be an interrogation into the idealistic visions of the nuclear family. Corey Deshon (A Million Little Things, Voice, To Police), in his directorial debut, delves into horror with social issues to explore. His scathing, microscopic view of the conservative family unit leaves us questioning. Is this a family? Or a cult? He leaves us walking a tightrope between both. Capturing tenderness and terror, Deshon plunges us into disorientating juxtapositions. The family’s care for their victim (Vivian Ngo) leaves us with a more profound sense of dread. Are they manipulating her for some other adrenaline-filled angle when they finally kill her? No, I think the alternative is much worse.

Through a wonderfully poetic and subdued soundscape, the first event we’re introduced to is the killing of a young woman escaping, who is later confirmed to be the father and son of the family. There is an establishment of the need for family and why this particular death has to happen. It is framed against the backdrop of summer heat and Deshon masterfully carries the violence of the act in a perfect balance of distance. It’s not too far away that we don’t know what’s happening, and it’s not close enough to be gratuitous gore. With this in mind, the tenderness we find the next victim experiencing, rings to me as an initiation technique. Was the previous escapee the daughter of the family? Is this the new one?

Vivian Ngo’s unwillingness to compromise with the father (Casper Van Dien) is a clash of identities and human will. Her performance is wonderfully cutting, subtly powerful and it oozes vulnerability. Not the weak kind, the kind that at any point, will blow your f*cking head off. Her journey through the film is one of epic emotion and she seamlessly rides them all through, effortlessly.

It becomes increasingly clear through the madness, that this family is a fantasy of the father’s making. He brings together people from the margins (Both mother and daughter are Vietnamese, and the son is American-Vietnamese), to have his conservative fantasy of a nuclear family. In his choice of people to make up his unit, Deshon makes a clever poke at the hypocrisy of the bourgeois who have particularly right-leaning tendencies. This is reinforced by the daughter, who is the chaos under the waves of control the father is trying to maintain. Convincing the son that a play must be put on to honour their father on his birthday, a great act of resistance happens. The daughter shows the father his life, in all its flaws and hypocrisies. She doesn’t have to do much, Father’s life is seedy enough.

There is something always brewing, like anarchy in the background of the father’s will to keep this Frankenstein family together. Daughter’s will for freedom is so strong and so overwhelming that it wills both the mother and son to be free. Sometimes in different ways, but free nonetheless. Deshon’s constraint throughout Daughter feeds further into the dread that we’re not sure is going to come. With impeccable colour, framing, blocking and a wonderful soundtrack, Daughter drives deep down into the psyche of the male goal of the nuclear family and questions: Do they really want a family, or do they want subservience? How far would they go to do it? Does it ever work out in the end for them?

It’s a pleasure to see Casper Van Dien in a more introspective role. He’s a perfect choice to drive this particular critique of patriarchy, as his rise to fame was in the most quintessential action films of his era, which all need to heighten patriarchal expectations for men.

When we are finally rewarded for coming on this journey with the cast, we’re left with a sense of tragedy and anger. There is a deep angle of softness – does father REALLY want this to be a family? Or is this about his expression of control? We’re still left absolutely rooting for the daughter and we rejoice when the mother finally escapes. We’re kept on our toes, and given a good twist when it’s in fact the son (who I assumed was the most brainwashed out of all of them but had an anarchic kind of chaos waiting in him.) that puts an end to all of this.

Deshon does something that I love and definitely appreciate in a film. After the climactic events, perpetrated by the son, he shows the effects the act had on him. There is most definitely a relief when a monster has been slain, but the moral compass of us all brings us some disturbance, even if it was the right thing to do. I was joyful when Deshon leaned into this for a few precious frames.

I can only describe Daughter as a room closing in around you. It pushes you to ask yourself what the hell would you do? It leaves you with a sense of reflection. What is family? What should it be? How does it make you feel? How does it make you look?

Sammy’s Archive – Daughter (2002)