Movie Review - Come to Daddy

This is the feature directorial debut for Ant Timpson, a New Zealand producer who created a 48-hour film festival in the early 2000's. He helped  create the film series The ABCs of Death in 2012. It was an anthology of horror-comedy shorts. While working on that anthology, Timpson met British writer, Toby Harvard who wrote the screenplay for this feature. Harvard mainly gets paid for his employ as a storyboard artist, but for The ABCs of Death 2, Harvard penned "G is for Grandad," which is about a young man and an older relative spending time alone together in the older man's, secluded home. There's increasing tension that the two generations don't like each other until building to a deadly moment. For this feature, Harvard has taken that same basic idea and stretched it out to 90 minutes.

For those who saw "G is for Grandad," don't worry. This feature doesn't include any full frontal nudity from a nonagenarian. It instead features full-frontal male nudity from a much younger man. This feature does possess the same dark humor as that 4-minute short. The generational clash or conflict isn't as pronounced, but it is here. The two generations at odds appear to be that of the Baby Boomers versus the Millennials. The clash is of course between men. One of whom is the older man who comes across as strong, rugged, tough, stoic and this early 20th century idea of what it is to be masculine. The other is the younger man who comes across as more weak, effete, soft, emotional and what's stereotypically more feminine.

Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) stars as Norval Greenwood. He's the younger man who receives a letter from his father after 30 years of absence. Norval's father abandoned him and his mother when Norval was just a child. Norval went without his dad for three decades when out of the blue he gets this letter from his father telling him to meet him in a remote house on the coast, sitting on a cliff, overlooking the beach but deep past the woods. Norval arrives and finds his dad there who welcomes him but begins to behave strangely, as if he doesn't want Norval there. After a while, Norval starts to hear strange noises. He clearly starts to feel that he's in danger or something is afoot.

That generational clash then intensifies until it comes to a head. Timpson of course has a good amount of blood and gore. Yet, he handles the generational clash, which initially arrives in the form of quiet tension between the two men. It helps that Wood has the most expressive eyes. His big, beautiful, blue eyes are good with exuding that fear and terror. Ultimately, the clash comes down to whether or not a person has to use deadly force in order to survive or succeed in these immediate moments.

Specifically, it's about whether Norval has to use deadly force in order to survive. Given my thoughts on the recent Bad Boys for Life, I was hoping that this film would also push back against this idea of having to use deadly force. To some degree, it does, but arguably this film also leans more toward the myth of redemptive violence. I thought the film would comically do what Mr. Magoo did and have Norval survive not due to near-sightedness but perhaps due to luck. I hoped Norval wouldn't have to resort to embracing the kind of masculinity that the previous generation more so embraced. It's not as if Norval transforms completely and it's arguable if that kind of redemptive violence is what ultimately prevails here. The final shot of the film would probably suggest not, but that brief final shot can't counterbalance all that precedes it.

Rated R for strong violence, language, sexual content and graphic nudity.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 36 mins.