Come To Daddy (2019)

Any film that features Elijah Wood shuffling around with the haircut of that guy that used to live at the back of our local shops and carry his whole life around in a dozen plastic bags is going to be a) weird, and b) worth your time. Come To Daddy is certainly weird. It's also very much worth your time.

Directed by Ant Timpson, who also came up with the idea for the story which was turned into screenplay form by Toby Harvard, it's almost not worth going into detail here. Suffice to say, Come To Daddy is best enjoyed without knowing any of the twists and turns it contains, and it's also a film in which many of the characters are pretending to be someone they're not. That goes for Norval Greenwood (Wood), his father, and anyone else who wanders into the proceedings.

I guess I should still try to summarise. Here's the most vague summary I can come up with. Norval Greenwood embarks on a trip to reconnect with his estranged father. Hijinks ensue. And when I say hijinks I am actually referring to conflict, tension, and a disturbing scene involving a pen smeared with feces. That covers the main points.

Wood is a lot of fun here. He's clearly uncomfortable at all times, trying to impress someone he shouldn't be that bothered by, and clearly trying to keep up a facade. Stephen McHattie is as good as ever, antagonising Wood and being thoroughly unlikeable, while also being inherently likeable due to his innate McHattie-ness, you get a small role for Martin Donovan, and there's a scene-stealing turn from Michael Smiley, who comes into things at about the halfway mark and really shakes everything up with the nature of his character.

Timpson puts everything together well, following the twisty script from Harvard while allowing the strong performances to carry viewers through the building atmosphere of head-messing strangeness and general what-the-fuckery. While it's no surprise to discover that this is written by someone who helped to write The Greasy Strangler, it's very easy to assume that Timpson has a number of other features to his credit already. He doesn't. This is his feature directorial debut, but there's nothing to signify that in the slick professionalism of the final product.

This won't work for everyone, and if you dislike it then I can safely assume that you will probably REALLY dislike it, but if you hop on for this dark and twisted ride, willing to go along with it all, then I think you will be able to appreciate it as a bold and warped thriller that also has a rich vein of pitch-black comedy running all the way through it. You just need to know what you're getting into, which is a film that doesn't want you to ever be sure or what you're getting into. Does that all make complete sense? No? Good, you're ready to check out the film now.

8/10

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