Come To Daddy: Thriller And Dark Humor

It is difficult to imagine a reality that surpasses Come to Daddy , the Ant Timpson film starring Elijah Wood and released just a few months ago. However, the film, as crazy as it may seem, has certain reminiscences of the real world and a satirical vision of the family that will not leave you indifferent.

Norval (Elijah Wood) seems to have always lived a wealthy life, albeit with severe emotional deprivation. He has never met his father and has serious problems with alcohol. Therefore, after receiving a letter from his father, he does not think twice and goes to the indicated address in order to meet his father.

However, after the reunion, everything is exceptionally strange; and his father, far from being a person dedicated to the quiet life, turns out to have a surprising past. All this will lead to a headless adventure in which Norval will be subjected to a test that he never thought of, in a search for his most disconcerting roots.

A peculiar film

Elijah Wood stars in this strange thriller that will remind more than one of the Swiss Army Man, the disconcerting film starring Daniel Radcliffe. The truth is that both actors have many similarities and the general public is very aware of their trajectories, therefore, it is not surprising that one evokes the other and that, in this case, Come to daddy reminds us of the Swiss Army Man .

While Wood rose to international fame thanks to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, the latter did the same with Harry Potter in the homonymous saga. And beyond their physical similarities, it is inevitable to think about their ties in the artistic world, since both start from blockbusters well known to the general public and ended up dedicating themselves to the most independent and even irreverent cinema.

Much has been said in the film world of adoptive families and uncertain origins in the case of children. It seems that family ties and the very structures that make up the family are very interesting terrain to explore in the world of cinema.

However, Come to daddy approaches it from a different perspective. The ridiculousness of the plot ends up becoming credible and, in part, it is due to the good work of its protagonist and the great ability to combine an endless number of genres on the part of the direction.

The young Norval has grown up in mystery, in a mansion in an affluent neighborhood, but despite the luxuries, he finds himself plunged into an emotional void that has accompanied him since childhood. He hardly knows anything about his origins, he seems to have lived a lie and the closest he has been to his father is a letter inviting him to visit him.

With the intention of filling that void and finally finding meaning in his existence, he decides to venture out to meet his father, but he runs into someone totally unexpected. With a man who seems to have succumbed to more vices than Norval and for whom lying is a fundamental part of his life.

The film plunges us into a laughable fantasy in which black humor predominates, but relying heavily on the cinema. The viewer will try to fit all the pieces of the puzzle that seem to make up Norval’s life, as he succumbs to a series of crazy, comic, wild and, why not say, also eschatological events.

Come to daddy : for lovers of black humor

Black humor releases tensions, allows our mind to plunge into the most terrifying and laughable nightmares. It strips us of all norms and invites us to let ourselves go.

Thus, the cinema or the theater become a catharsis for the spectator who represses their stimuli. Come to daddy does not represent a conventional fantasy, it does not parody our own reality, but it does invite us to let ourselves go.

Escaping from the conventions and the purely affective, he introduces us to a story about the search for identity, in which the past is relevant. In the middle of a plot that could well be conventional, that of the search for the origins and the reasons that lead the protagonist to want to fill his void, we end up witnessing a crazy adventure that turns outlandish at times.

Finally, through Norval, we see that our actions are deeply determined by the events in our lives and, in extreme situations, we are capable of the impossible ; of everything that we repudiate and that, in society, we would refuse to accept.

Like a kind of carnival or satirical smile, Come to daddy laughs at everything and, at the same time, calls it into question. No, it is not a great film to remember for centuries, but it is a tragic caricature of families, of that absurd search to know who we are and where we come from.

Thus, from the plausible, from the family structures, we end up witnessing a most strange puzzle. The film ends up offering us, even for moments, absolutely necessary seconds of disconnection and evasion and which, of course, are not exempt from analysis.