Come to Daddy Review (Film, 2020) #31DaysofHorror
content warning: alcohol abuse, foul language, death by suicide (discussed), gore, nudity
Norval is invited to visit his father who abandoned the family 30 years ago. His father is an alcoholic with no sense of empathy or appreciation for his son fulfilling his request. After a brief struggle, his father dies of a heart attack, leaving Norval to deal with the physical remains of the man who abandoned him and never gave a reason why.
Creating a horror film about actual abuse is an incredibly difficult thing. It is such a potentially upsetting subject matter to delve into for so many people that you have to be in total control of your message and intent. Go too far and you’re exploiting actual pain and suffering that is, sadly, far too relatable for many people. Be tepid in your approach and you trivialize this kind of pain and suffering as a mere plot device. It is often a losing situation.
Ant Thompson directs Toby Harvard’s screenplay Come to Daddy. There is a clear idea here that does carry through the whole film. It’s just…more complicated than it originally seems. There’s a twist going into the third act that turns this into a very different film. The result is chaotic by choice.
The first act of Come to Daddy is upsetting enough that I came very close to walking away. The relationship between Norval and his estranged father is a special kind of abuse: total emotional neglect. Nothing Norval can say or do will do anything to establish a bond with his father. His father does not care. His father seems to revel in his misery, thwarting every attempt to connect on any small level.
The second act turns into a Gothic horror story. Norval is now in charge of a strange home built into the cliff by the beach. He describes it as looking like a UFO from the 1960s when he first sees it. He is stuck in a strange sort of limbo, waiting for anyone to come help him with the body of his father. The man is a total stranger by choice, filled with a lifetime of secrets stashed away in a remote house. It seems like Norval might be able to take the house as his own if he can uncover all the secrets.
The third act turns into an absurd comedy/thriller film. It is not bad for what it is, but it is a very different film from the rest. The theme becomes clear in the third act: learning to accept and experience justified anger. Norval, an incredibly passive character lost in the world, begins to see that it’s okay to feel. He is a sensitive man, an artist, and he just wants people to be happy. He is punished when he shows anger for the first time with the death of his father. This sends him into a tailspin in the second act that leads to genuine growth in the third. You are allowed to be upset, though your anger and frustration might have unintended consequences.
There’s a recurring theme in my writing about horror. I would rather watch an uneven film that tries to do something new and different than a bland film that does everything right. Come to Daddy is messy by design. Each act is its own style of horror story exploring the same theme. It has the variety of an anthology film in a singular, bizarre narrative. There is no other film quite like Come to Daddy and a simple good or bad distinction is irrelevant.
Come to Daddy is streaming on Amazon Prime.
