Come to Daddy: Stephen McHattie's weirdo bad-dad is a brief highlight in full-bore gore-fest
By Linda Barnard
Rating: C-plus
Nobody captures the, “wide-eyed, twitchy woodland creature” look quite like Elijah Wood, who stars as Norval in Kiwi director Ant Timpson’s gruesome comedic horror Come to Daddy.
Carrying a mysterious note from his long-estranged father, Norval arrives at a remote ocean-front house in Oregon (Tofino B.C. stands in) nervously hoping for a reunion, or at least closure.
When Pontypool’s Stephen McHattie opens the door, it’s pure, cowering-meets-creepy poetry.
Elijah Wood suffers from parental issues in the gory horror-comedy Come to Daddy.
Norval is a 30-something underachiever with a weird bowl haircut and unrealistic star-struck deejay ambitions. Truth is, he lives at home with his mom in Los Angeles. A reunion with the father who abandoned him as a kid might just close a few loops in Norval’s sorry life.
And then dad turns out to be a squinting, acerbic, hung over, aging hippie who would rather bait Norval than do any of that bonding stuff.
Dad’s got a fondness for whatever bottle is handy. Challenging Norval’s sobriety isn’t all he does to get under the kid’s skin. A tightly shot fireside scene, where father sees right through son’s bragging fantasy about his famous musician friend and torments him mercilessly, is the film’s highlight.
Timpson makes his feature debut with Come to Daddy, which follows the same frenetic, gross-out loopy path of his work as a producer (Turbo Kid, The Greasy Strangler).
Broad comedy meets escalating violence as Norval starts to twig that daddy is a weirdo and there may be some very bad things about to happen.
Writers Toby Harvard and Timpson come up with some good bits for McHattie but an endless repetition of the c-word gets tired pretty quickly.
Quentin Tarantino fans will find a kindred spirit in Timpson’s delight at ramping up gore at every opportunity, where anything in a kitchen drawer or office desk will do very nicely to cause mayhem.
Martin Donovan (Big Little Lies) and a scene-stealing Michael Smiley (Free Fire) also get involved in Norval’s gruesome family reunion.
What starts out as a promising comic thriller deflates quickly as it becomes clear we’re just here for the gore. The plot has more holes in it than one of Timpson’s dispatched characters. The cast, especially Wood, seems game to make Come to Daddy work, but the restraint required to infuse the film with some originality isn’t Timpson’s thing (although moviegoers who like their body counts high and served with plenty of splatter will delight in Come to Daddy’s macabre mayhem).
Come to Daddy. Written by Toby Harvard and Ant Timpson. Directed by Ant Timpson. Starring Elijah Wood, Stephen McHattie and Martin Donovan. Opens Feb. 7 in Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa.