STAB DAD
FEATURE FILM IN DEVELOPMENT
After his mother and sister die, an isolated 11-year-old sent to his estranged father’s decaying Tasmanian mansion hears their ghosts urging him to spill Dad’s blood—fulfilling the wrath of a haunted land built on stolen graves.
STAB DAD is a supernatural horror feature about grief, guilt, and the scars of colonisation. After his mother and sister die, 11-year-old Jacob is sent to a crumbling Tasmanian mansion to live with the distant father he barely knows. Isolated from friends, signal, and culture, Jacob hears whispers, feels unseen footsteps, and senses eyes in every shadow. When the flickering TV reveals his dead sister, she delivers their mother’s ultimatum: the family can reunite—if Jacob kills Dad.
The house itself is complicit: built on stolen country, its foundations rest on looted gravestones, turning it into a warrijki—a spirit place where grief demands blood. As the mansion stokes Jacob’s loneliness into murderous rage, father and son must confront buried secrets and the generational violence they risk repeating. Inspired by my own childhood in a “haunted” Tasmanian house, STAB DAD transforms personal truth into mythic terror.
CREATIVE TEAM
DIRECTOR Josh Sambono
PRODUCER Laura Sambono
PRESS & AWARDS
Selected to attend MIFF 37 degrees South International Market in 2025.
Announcement of this project at Bright Llama Production’s 2025 Premiere Party.