Come To Daddy (2019)

Rating: 4/10

Norvel receives a letter from his estranged father requesting a visit to his remote cabin. Having not seen him since childhood, he jumps at the idea of visiting and rekindling some relationship. Upon his arrival, Norvel soon realises his father isn’t quite how he imagined, and the reality of his past is far stranger than he thought.

This film was pretty disappointing. The equivalent of eating chicken nuggets without any dip, it’s just dry and missing a vital element of the magic formula. I really wanted to like it, and after hearing lots of great things and seeing a whopping 86% on rotten tomatoes, I decided to give it a go. A gruesome horror-comedy starring Elija Wood? That sounds like my dream Friday night, but unfortunately, my expectations were too high. I set myself up for failure. Maybe if my stupid brain didn’t hype it up, I could have enjoyed it a little more.

Ever since watching The Faculty as a child, I've been a massive fan of Elija Wood, so once again seeing him in a horror setting definitely satisfied some teenage nostalgia. He's, without a doubt, the best part of the film. It's everything else that lets it down. The biggest pitfall, in my opinion, was the story. I'm not the type of person that needs a brilliantly unique story to keep me hooked, but it has to excel in some way. Not even excel, maybe just...coast. I love watching films, plain and simple. So if they're hitting that average C marker, I'm pretty happy, not blown away, but I can say to myself that those two hours were well spent. Unfortunately, that's not what I said at the end of Come To Daddy. The film takes far too long to actually get going. It was so drawn out and could have gotten to the central conflict much quicker. What's worse is once we were slap bang in the middle of the mayhem, it just left me thinking...is that it? It seemed pretty predictable and bland. Coupling this with a very gruesome 30 minutes and it just felt like the gore was a bit of a desperate attempt to shock.

The most worthwhile element of the film is the father-son conflict. I actually think this part was very well executed. Something about on-screen father-son relationships really tug at my heartstrings. For all you Freudians out there, don't look for any deeper meaning behind that...seriously, don't! In fact, this conflict held the film together and motivated me to carry on watching until the end. Otherwise, I may have just turned it off. It's not that it was that bad. It just wasn't interesting enough to really keep me engaged and I didn't really care that much about what happened to the characters. So yeah, all in all, it was actually pretty bad.

Conclusion

Come To Daddy doesn’t offer much. It’s Elija Wood being awkward, a father-son conflict, and some gore. There’s not much beyond that. I would honestly say I'd pass on this film, but I'll leave it up to you to decide.

Side note: What’s with the neon lighting in so many thrillers/horrors of the past 5 years? Seriously? Give it a rest! Jeeez.