Come to Daddy (2019)

July 6, 2020 1:22 PM

A naive young adult (Elijah Wood) visits his estranged father in a remote location after receiving a cryptic letter.

What begins as a darkly comical character study turns on a dime into violent mayhem.

posted by treepour (9 comments total)

Wood is nearly 40. I wonder how long he'll be playing ingenu roles.
posted by zadcat at 3:35 PM on July 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Come to Daddy is streaming via Amazon Prime in the US.
posted by Etrigan at 5:25 AM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

Wood is nearly 40. I wonder how long he'll be playing ingenu roles.

Forever I hope.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:15 AM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

I watched this. It's... a bit of an ordeal. It goes through a tonal shift halfway through that's a bit of a narrative car wreck. And I think that's the right metaphor -- it's sort of a roadside accident that you wish you hadn't slowed down to see, but had to rubberneck to the end.
posted by Catblack at 7:01 AM on July 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

I was lukewarm on this, but I do appreciate that Elijah Wood has basically spent his entire post-LotR career doing really weird stuff.
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:43 AM on July 7, 2020 [5 favorites]

Some might say his weird indie roles are due to him speaking out against systemic sexual abuse in Hollywood but he does seem to be having fun.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 9:24 AM on July 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

This was not nearly as weird and psychosexual as I was expecting. Honestly, I was kind of disappointed because based on the title, blurb, and people involved I as expecting this to be all kinds off-putting and bonkers. The best part for me was recognizing Tofino.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 6:50 PM on July 8, 2020

I watched this. It's... a bit of an ordeal. It goes through a tonal shift halfway through that's a bit of a narrative car wreck. And I think that's the right metaphor -- it's sort of a roadside accident that you wish you hadn't slowed down to see, but had to rubberneck to the end.

For better or worse (certainly the latter when it comes to my nervous disposition), this pretty much describes my kind of movie.

It wasn't my favorite but I couldn't stop thinking about it and was curious as to what others thought. Despite the mayhem, it really did feel like an unexpectedly sincere movie about healing a relationship (at least in moments), and I thought it walked the line between dark comedy and horror much more effectively than a lot of films that attempt to walk that line. The main characters felt real to me and I thought Elijah Wood carried the emotional ups and downs perfectly and was magnetic to watch.
posted by treepour at 7:42 PM on July 8, 2020

I had absolutely no idea what to make of this. I figured anything with both Steven McHattie and Martin Donavan couldn’t be all that bad, and I’m still not quite sure whether I was mostly right or just completely wrong. I didn’t think it ever really quite settled on what it wanted to be, and I thought Wood was a bad casting choice. Maybe it’s just me, but I think he's way too old be be playing a moody emo boy. Also the stuff in the movie that thought it was frightfully clever really kind of wasn’t, like the motel manager talking about big breasts or whatever it was.
posted by holborne at 4:50 PM on July 15, 2020