There's a dated sense of pacing to this, which makes sense for a movie from 1972. There are also a few odd little missteps, but for the most part, it's a good, Twilight Zone-like story.
There's a bit of silliness, mostly with the core part of the premise. Somehow, this creature is essential to allowing a person to die. I don't feel like this was explained to my satisfaction. Each person seems to be born with one of these creatures, but the role that they play in executing a death seems unclear. There's some goofy science that involves trapping the creature in a beam of light, the story never seems to execute things in three-dimensional space. A hard idea to write about, but after triggering one light beam, and catching the creature in it, the beam is shifted over, eventually depositing the creature into a box. Logically, the would need two beams of light to do this.
Dealing with immortality is usually a fun story, but this movie is a little hesitant to do anything too interesting with it. The main twist to the story is a good idea, but the postscript is a little lacking.
To spoil things:
After the father causes the death of his daughter, his son-in-law decides to commit suicide by sabotaging his own immortality process. This leaves the father immortal, without a means of releasing his creature to allow his death. We get a coda of the father wandering the street, ancient and homeless. We see him get hit by two cars at once, which is where the movie started out. Of course, he survives.
There's no reason why this kind of immortality would render him invulnerable.
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