Category: Horror

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

Rated: MA15+The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

Directed by: Michael Chaves

Story by: James Wan, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick

Starring: Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Sterling Jerins, Julian Hilliard, Ruairi O’Connor, Bonnie Aarons, John Noble, Eugenie Bondurant, Sarah Catherine Hook.

“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” -Friedrich Nietzsche.

Based on a true story.

July 18, 1981.  Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed (Patrick Wilson), priest and the Glatzel family keep vigil over eight-year-old, David (Julian Hilliard): a young kid.  Possessed.

‘I just can’t remember one quite like this,’ says Ed, as the film opens with all the drama of an exorcist.

Set in Brookfield, The Devil Made Me Do It follows the possessed rather than the origin of a demon, giving this third instalment of, The Conjuring series, a different tone.

Here, there’s a hint of the courtroom, with Arne (Ruairi O’Connor), the boyfriend of David’s sister, charged with First Degree Murder and facing the death penalty; Arne’s defence, ‘Not guilty by reason of demonic possession.’

Enter Ed and Lorraine with the interesting premise of swearing to God before giving evidence an argument of: if there’s acknowledgement of God, why not the Devil?

The film is built around a real case, with recordings of the exorcism played-out with the rolling credits.  Creepy.  Probably the creepiest part of the film.

Not to say there weren’t scary bits – there’s still moments of Lorraine traveling through to an other world as she follows her visions making contact with the source of evil.  Made even scarier when she realises the contact goes both ways.

‘Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared,’ a comment made by Arne to young David before possession turns him into a killer.

There’s certainly some dark themes here, but I have to say the horror in this instalment lacks the same impact as the previous Conjuring films.

And the darkness here is offset by the ever-resilient love story between Ed and Lorraine, ‘My home is here with him,’ says Lorraine about Ed.

There’s also the young love between the accused and girlfriend, Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook).

So there’s more of a dramatic tone, somewhat humanising the horror.  Which for me took away some of the edge to those scares – rather than putting more weight behind the characters.

Not sure why.  Maybe I just didn’t believe the young love between Arne and Debbie and the whole standing by her man.

And somehow the foundation of this instalment, with the court case and recordings seemed less believable.  How’s that for irony.

But all I can do is review how the film hits me – and it hits OK with more emphasis on the relationship between Ed and Lorraine making the film a balance of love story and horror, for me, diluting the impact of the scares.

A Quiet Place Part II

Rated: MA Quiet Place Part II

Directed and Written by: John Krasinski

Based on Characters Created by: Bryan Woods, Scott Beck

Produced by: Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, John Krasinski

Starring: Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Djimon Hounsou, John Krasinski.

‘Keep listening,’ signs Regan (Millicent Simmonds), because, A Quiet Place Part II is about the children left, the sons and daughter walking in the footsteps of their father (John Krasinski) so the sequel is a continuation of the previous story, to go, “deeper”: the term John Krasinski (writer and director) used to best describe Part II in the Q&A following the preview screening.

It’s hard not to walk into the cinema with sky high expectations after being blown away by the surprisingly taunt suspense yet moving original (A Quiet Place (2018) got 4.5/5 from me, see review here).

And my expectations were met.

Because the tone and feeling are in the same realm but instead of the surprise of family drama amongst the thrill of surviving a monster invasion – Part II is more than just surviving, this is about hope.

Instead of that linear unfolding of story (remember the nail?!), the suspense here is crushing as the family separates to survive: ‘You got this, you have everything you need,’ Evelyn (Emily Blunt) tells her son, Marcus (Noah Jupe), hand to chest – breathe.

And by separating the characters the film multiplies the number of intense situations.  Just waiting, waiting, for that next scare, that hum in the background building to suddenly snap.

I don’t want to give too much away but there’s some clever shifts in time here, seamless, as Marcus remembers Day 1.  The invasion.

I wasn’t expecting the father, Lee (John Krasinski) to be back but what a great way to reintroduce the world by going back to the beginning.

There’s that absolute silence that again invites the audience to lean in, to then jump (there are so many jumps!) with explosive action, the audience gasping and twittering as the monsters prowl, purr and claw people apart.

Jumping forward to Day 474.  It gets tense.

John went on to say the original was written as a family drama that just happened to be a genre film. That family drama is what made it for me (as well as the suspense, play with sound, story, etc).  The father character and the family unit was just so well played the impact still resonates.

So to continue with the family unit but now changed was good but different.

There’s the introduction of friend and neighbour, Emmet (Cillian Murphy).

John describes his character as morally ambiguous and an anchor for the story.

Emmet was an interesting character, a round character that had to be warmed up.  But the standout here for me was Millicent as the daughter, Regan: strong, gentle, determined.  Just like her mother.

Part II wasn’t quite as good as the original (for me) because some of that, wow this is different, had to be built elsewhere.  But with clever direction, steering the tone and build of suspense (really-ramped up this time), while still opening-up the family drama – those scenes of mother and baby so authentic and sweet – made Part II a worthy sequel.

And watching on the big screen, with the audience gasping, jumping and as a whole all holding our breath (breathe) was a treat.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw

Rated: R18+Spiral: From the Book of Saw

Directed by: Darren Lynn Bousman

Written by: Josh Stolberg & Pete Goldfinger

Produced by: Mark Burg and Oren Koules (original SAW team)

Starring: Chris Rock, Max Minghella, Marisol Nichols and Samuel L. Jackson.

“Am I getting under your skin, Detective Banks?”

Inspired by the Saw franchise (starting back in 2004 with Leigh Whannell & James Wan teaming up as writer and director), Spiral is the 10th so far in the series – but wow, it’s been a long time since I came anywhere near a Saw movie.  So I was bracing myself for the gore of, Spiral: the case over the face contraptions, ready to slice and dice.

And there’s plenty of that here: tongue, fingers, lots of missing appendages.

The film opens on a carnival and fireworks, then down into the underbelly of the city.

The underground is where we’re first introduced to the Pig Man: “I want to play a game.”

The phrase a familiar echo from the ghost of John Krammer.

Here, in, Spiral, we’re introduced to Detective Ezekiel Banks (Chris Rock), AKA Zeke.

The other cops in his precinct don’t like Banks.

He turned in his partner.  A dirty cop.

To them, he’s just a rat.

Saddled with a fresh rookie (Max Minghella), abrasive and lone wolf Zeke is now forced to play nice (ha, ha).

Sent to yet another dead ‘hobo’ murder scene, Zeke has to embrace working with a partner again because this is more than a suicide by train.  This has all the markings of a Jigsaw copy-cat.

But this copy-cat?  This one likes killing cops.

Zeke has a lot to stand up against: his rep as a snitch, living under the shadow of his highly regarded police veteran father (Samuel L. Jackson).  So there’s this detective with a past, a murder to be solved and some cringe-worthy gore.

Why don’t the victims just let themselves be killed rather than torturing themselves only to be killed anyway? I wonder…  Then think, must be that survival instinct.  But Spiral doesn’t really tap into that tension like the original.  The, how far would you go to survive.  This is more about the character, detective Banks, solving a crime.Spiral: From the Book of Saw

Another difference is this abrasive detective is actually really funny.

Some of the dialogue delivered by Chris Rock is gold: ‘I just found out Pilates doesn’t exist,’ Banks tells the rookie because he’s going through a divorce and his ex cheated on him (no doubt while she was supposed to be going to Pilates).

I can be on the fence with a gory horror.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s just gross.

But throw in a bit of humour in the breaks and the story suddenly gets more entertaining, gets, another layer; to be able to absorb that next visceral serving of well, bloody meat.

I’m not saying this next instalment is brilliant (I’m getting sensitive to overacting), but without expectation, I got into the storyline and thought to myself mid-way, if it ties-off OK, this will be a decent film.

Make me laugh in between the bloody stuff and splice in a decent detective story and I say, worth a watch.

Wrong Turn

Rating: TBCWrong Turn

Directed by: Mike P. Nelson

Screenplay by: Alan B. McElroy

Based on: ‘Wrong Turn’ by Alan B. McElroy

Starring: Matthew Modine, Bill Sage, Charlotte Vega, Emma Dumont, Damian Maffei, Valerie Jane Parker, Chaney Morrow, David Hutchinson.

Seeing the preview to Wrong Turn, it’s easy to think you’re in for another movie about a group of teens getting lost in the woods and murdered by some crazed hillbillies.

But ‘wrong turn’ doesn’t just mean, opps, went off the trail in the woods and got murdered.  There’s the idea of the moral, taking a wrong turn, of right and wrong – the question of what is the right way to live, what code, what society; to even think about, what is sick and what is living.

It’s a difficult movie to review.

So I’ll try to outline a synopsis without giving too much away.

Three couples go hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

Immediately, the tone of the film is ominous with flames and scary locals, shadowy figures and the landlady of the B&B where the group is staying, warning: ‘The landscape can be… Unforgiving’ (kinda harking back to that, right and wrong, idea).

There’re rumours of people living on the mountain.  Families going to live up there in 1859, to keep living the American Ideal.  They call themselves, The Foundation.

Any strangers that leave the trail and get lost up there never come back.  Either alive or dead.

But when Scott’s (Matthew Modine) daughter, Jen (Charlotte Vega) goes missing, he’s determined to find her.

And that’s where the film opens, to a father nervously tapping his clenched fist against his thigh as he drives into a small town in middle America.

The film starts as this visceral horror.  Not too gory but shocking at times and clever in the suspense and pacing – cue soundtrack building to those unexpected jumps.

At one point Jen laments, ‘This isn’t happening.’

And it is surreal how the movie (getting a little metaphysical here) unfolds, still a suspense thriller but pushing some unexpected questions from the characters and ideas for the audience to think about.  And it keeps going, with a horror-weird-society-cult-story layered with thought-provoking ideas like people’s preconceptions of what it is to live completely free from modern society being used to twist the story into another direction, so you follow the film into unforeseen places.

I really enjoy a film that starts as one type of movie to then open up and take the audience somewhere else.

What I thought was going to be a teen slasher move turned into so much more – but still with good jumps and hands-in-front-of-the-face action; not so confronting I couldn’t watch.  But enough to get the heart pumping, to keep watching to see where the film took me next.

Interesting stuff.  And entertaining.

Hope I haven’t given too much away because it’s such a pleasure to be surprised by a film and, Wrong Turn went places unexpected – worth a watch.

The Unlit (Witches of Blackwood)

Rated: MA15+The Unlit

Directed by: Kate Whitbread

Produced by: Kate Whitbread

Written by: Darren Markey

Starring: Cassandra Magrath, Kevin Hofbauer, Lee Mason, John Voce, Nicholas Denton, Susan Vasiljevic, Francesca Waters.

We’ve been waiting for you

The mood of, The Unit is like the reflection of a forest on a lake.  Impenetrable.

Ominous.

Until a girl answers her mobile while being driven through the forest with, ‘Hey, what’s up?’

The comment just didn’t fit the mood, awkwardly dispelling the build of tension.

But as the film continued I stopped taking notes because they’re times the story scratches at the door of scary.

Cassie (Cassandra Magrath) is a cop on the edge after witnessing the suicide of a local boy (Nicholas Denton).

The mystery of his death is revealed as the film follows Cassie back to her childhood home in Blackwood after a call from her uncle Clifford (John Voce).

There’s been a death.

Her father.

Cassie is not feeling right with the world.

Cassie tells her boyfriend (Kevin Hofbauer) she has to go home to find answers.

Where it doesn’t take long to realise, The Unlit is a witch heritage story.

Yet there’s mystery because Cassie is followed by the trauma of understanding why the young kid committed suicide in front of her.

And when she finds letters written by her uncle about her mother, Cassie discovers there’s more to her mother then she realises or remembers.  She discovers her mother’s obsession with the forest while in an asylum.  Her mother.  Presumed dead.

Yet still haunting the town of Blackwood.

The haunting is shown in the dark smudge across the eyes of the women who still live there, amongst the absence of men and children.  The absence, or what isn’t said, noted by writer Darren Markey (at the recent Q&A screening at Lido Cinema) as an essential part of the structure of the story.

So there’s mystery but more than anything, there’s atmosphere, created by director, Kate Whitbread in 13 days of shooting.

What made me sit up was the scene set amongst the twisted pines just behind Lorne’s (Victoria) main beach.  A fantastic setting to tap into the mood: a woman stood-too, questioned under the twisted branches of pine, otherworldly.

The trees and ocean are used well to speak like the voices of the dead as the mystery of Cassie and her heritage deepens.

There’s some clever here.  But also some gloss.  Or smudge, like the dark under the eyes of the haunted women of Blackwood is contrived, breaking that careful tone of mystery; like the use of a lamp to create atmosphere fails because, why wouldn’t you use the flashlight on your phone?  Which is in hand, and used for just that function later?

There were times I wondered if the ominous trees were going to be the best part of the film.

So yes, The Unlit is a low budget film.

But as the story progressed the writing shone with some great acting: lead, Cassandra Magrath holding her nerve searching those haunted dark rooms, Nicholas Denton as the dead young Luke a powerful spectre and Nikola Dubois as the haunted friend absorbing in her twisted monologue.

The highlight for me was when John Voce as the uncle speaks of people not being sick, just knowing things we don’t.  Goosebumps.

So, the film doesn’t always suspend reality and is a little obvious at times, but some of the scenes that play out the dark dialogue really tap at the door making, The Unlit, worth a watch.

Deerskin

Rated: MA15+Deerskin

Directed and Written by: Quentin Dupieux

Photography, Editing: Quentin Dupieux

Art and Set Direction: Joan Le Boru

Sound: Guillaume Le Braz, Alexis Place, Gadou Naudin, Cyril Holtz

Starring: Jean Dujardin, Adele Haenel

French with English subtitles

‘I swear never to wear a jacket as long as I live.’

Deerskin first introduces Georges (Jean Dujardin) wearing a green jacket with three plastic buttons.  He parks on the wrong side of the petrol bowser.  And looking at his reflection in the car window he frowns at what he sees.  Then he flushes the jacket in the public toilet.

Yep, Georges is losing it.

The music flares.

And I think to myself, I already like this movie.

The film is character driven and continues to follow Georges.  But there’s another character in this movie.  A jacket.  We meet the beast.  The new jacket: 100% Deerskin.

The way the film flashes to a live deer in the wilderness seals it somehow.  Just how cool the jacket is.  But It’s not. It’s made from the skin of this beautiful innocent animal (see previous flash to said deer in the wilderness).  And, it’s got… fringes.  But Georges LOVES it: ‘Style de tueur (Killer style),’ he says, looking in the mirror.

It just makes me grin.

After that Georges keeps driving.

‘You’re no-where Georges.  You no longer exist.’  That’s what his ex-wife tells him, over the phone.

Georges ends up in the bar of a small village, where he meets the barmaid, Denise (Adele Haenel).  She’s been burnt by love too.  But Georges is a brand-new man in his deerskin jacket.  He tells Denise he’s a film maker.

It makes sense to say he’s a film maker.  He’s been recording film all day, so it’s kinda the same.  ‘No it’s not,’ says the jacket.

Instead of getting to know an available woman, Georges gets to know the jacket as his relationship with this 100% deerskin jacket becomes the subject of Georges’ movie to be.

Killer style indeed.

Director and writer Quentin Dupieux says, ‘I wanted to film insanity.’

And Georges has lost it.  But wow, he’s really enthusiastic about it.

The way Georges insanity is shown is somehow shocking and hilarious.

It’s the same dark humour used in, The Lobster, but less confronting even though there’s more killing…  And this whole jacket business is just so ticklish.

Jean Dujardin (who plays Georges in the film) explains it’s Quentin’s use of space that creates the comedy, ‘It’s in those moments of hesitation that the comedy and drama blend. You’re right on the borderline. All those scenes, for example, in which Georges demands money, or can’t pay. Quentin takes the time to stretch out the sense of malaise, to allow for some lingering doubt. Is Georges going to turn violent? Weep? Laugh? You never know what will happen. Time stands still for a moment, and those little agonies make me want to die laughing.’

Then there’s Georges dream in life – for him, it’s all about wearing this deerskin jacket.  To be the only person wearing… a jacket.  It doesn’t make sense.  But from the perspective of Georges, as he makes a film about his dream, it kinda does.

The character Denise gets it.  She reckons the jacket is like a shell to protect the wearer from the outside world.

I think it’s because Georges hates who he used to be, wearing that green blazer with the three plastic buttons.

Or perhaps Deerskin is just a weirdo movie that’s put together in a way that somehow makes sense.

Whether you analyse the layers or not, I was thoroughly absorbed and entertained from start to finish.

Like Denise says, ‘I’m into it.’

The Vigil

Rated: MA15+The Vigil

Directed and Written by: Keith Thomas

Produced by: J. D. Lifshitz & Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures and Adam Margules

Cinematographer: Zach Kuperstein

Score: Micael Yezerski

Starring: Dave Davis, Menashe Lustig, Malky Goldman, Lynn Cohen, Fred Melamed, Ronald Cohen, Nati Rabinowitz, Moshe Lobel, Efraim Miller, Lea Kalisch and Ethan Stone.

The Vigil has the style of a classic horror, of creaking floorboards and shadows hiding in the dark combined with a different style of story: a Jewish shomer or watchman of the dead, haunted by a monster awakened in a forest during the Holocaust.

Recently moving to ‘Boro’ Park, Brooklyn (a Hasidic community), Yakov (Dave Davis) is adapting to his new life in America.  Having just lost his faith and struggling – having to choose between buying medication or food – the leader of a support group for Jews adapting to their new life says, ‘What matters is that we’re moving forward.’

And underneath all the shadows and monsters, moving forward is the driving theme of the film.

When Yakov is offered the job of shomer, he weighs up his hesitation to return to a life he wants to leave behind versus the offer of money he desperately needs to pay his bills.

All he has to do is sit for five hours and wait for morning.

It only takes fifteen minutes for him to believe he’s losing his mind.

Set over one night, most of The Vigil is set in the house of recently deceased Rubin Lutvak and his wife.  A known recluse, Mr Lutvak was the only surviving member of his family after the Second World War.

It’s all dark and creepy and goes down that path of history and memory so there’s a complete story behind the monster haunting, damned to look back at the past.

Writer and director Keith Thomas has a background as a novelist (The Clarity (2018) and Dahlia Black (2019)) as well as a screenwriter, and he’s taken time to round out the backstory so The Vigil becomes a horror movie, with a difference.

There’s a feeling that this is a unique storyline because the supernatural of the horror is based on Jewish culture and mysticism.  Where four hundred dollars for five hours of time becomes the price of the shomer’s soul, as he becomes haunted by a monster that feeds on the memories of the broken.

And there’s some scares here, I yelped at one point, after being left on the edge with moments where Yakov thinks he can see something, there in the shadows, so I look, not knowing if the mind is playing tricks or if there’s actually something there.

Dave Davis as Yakov is well-cast, believable in his nonchalance and questioning of his sanity.

And the thumping and scratching, the sharp intake of breath and winding soundtrack adds that extra tension, even more during the silence, the pause, the waiting.

The only drawback for me was the portrayal of the monster, those claws not quite convincing.  Not quite as scary as those shadows used to build the suspense.

But overall, The Vigil is worth a watch.

The Wretched

Rated: MA15+The Wretched

Written and Directed by: The Pierce Brothers (Brett Pierce, Drew Pierce)

Produced by: Chang Tseng, Ed Polgardy

Music Composed by: Devin Burrows

Starring: John-Paul Howard, Piper Curda, Zarah Mahler, Azie Tesfai, Kevin Bigley, Blane Crockarell, Jamison Jones.

‘Can’t be lost if we don’t know where we’re going in the first place.’

Opening 35 years ago to a teen girl going to a house to babysit, it’s all pop music and the 80s.  Until she walks down the stairs to the basement…

Fast forward to five days ago and we meet 17-year-old Ben (John-Paul Howard) on his way to visit his dad (Jamison Jones).

Ben’s got a broken arm, his parents are getting divorced and the local kids are mean.  Except Mallory (Piper Curda) – she has a crush.

It’s all a bit teen, even to the spying on the next-door neighbours when they’re about to get it on.

But horrors and teen dramas can be a good mix if the right characters get killed off and the monster’s scary enough.

Enter, the Dark Mother.  A monster of the forest that feeds on the ‘forgotten’, AKA: eats kids.

‘Mum’s acting weird,’ says young next-door neighbour Dillon (Blane Crockarell).

And quite rightly so as the Dark Mother takes possession, creaking, stinking, her flesh rotting, her whispers making ears bleed.

I just didn’t find this Dark Mother particularly scary.

There’s an overreliance on the soundtrack with no real back story to this monster.

The Pierce Brothers (Brett Pierce, Drew Pierce) were inspired by Roald Dahl’s The Witches and the experience of living through their parents’ divorce.  “We cobbled together our favorite aspects of Black Annis, an English legend, and the Boo Hag of the Appalachian Mountains and fused it with our own creepy concepts.”

But the idea behind the monster doesn’t translate.  Adding some history into the film would have given the Dark Mother more meaning, giving the scares more meat.  Instead, she’s a mystery in the film, where all Ben can figure is that it exists.

But it’s not all bad.

The story itself has some twists, and the pacing of the drama is just right.

The dad character adds a playful tone to the otherwise taking-life-way-too-seriously son, Ben:

‘The TV doesn’t have a HDMI port,’ says Ben.

The Dad replies, ‘Did you plug it in?’

Yet there’s no circling back to that 35 years ago beginning of the film, so why start there?

The film lived out its own journey of, can’t be lost if it doesn’t know where it’s going…

All the symbolism was there but then the narrative got too caught up in the teen drama so the drama was better executed than the horror of the dark monster.

Certainly not the worst horror I’ve seen but the few moments of, OK, that just happened, didn’t lift the tension to any genuine scares.

Vivarium

Rated: MVivarium

Directed by: Lorcan Finnegan

Written by: Garret Shanley

Produced by: Brendan McCarthay & John McDonnell

Co-Producers: Jean-Yves Roubin, Cassandre Warnauts, Alexander Brøndsted, Antonio Tublen

Starring: Imogen Poots & Jesse Eisenberg.

“The idea of owning your own home has become like a faery tale. Insidious advertising promises ‘ideal living’, a fantasy version of reality that we strive towards. It is the bait that leads many into a trap. Once ensnared we work our whole lives to pay off debts. The social contract is a strange and invisible agreement that we flutter towards like moths to a flame.” – Director, Lorcan Finnegan.

Watching a cuckoo bird kick the other baby bird out of its nest and to see the mother feed the imposter – demanding, destroying, killing – sets the tone of the world young couple, Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) and Gemma (Imogen Poots) find themselves trapped: Yonder: You’re Home Right Now.

Walking into a real estate agent’s office, they follow the creepy agent, Martin (Jonathan Aris) to the Yonder housing development, only to find the creepy agent has left and they can’t seem to find their way out – all they can see are perfect clouds and identical green houses lined up, green and the many shades of green, they always end up back at Number 9.

And inside Number 9 is one blue room, the baby room.  The baby boy room.

‘Do you have any children?’

‘No, not yet,’ Gemma replies with a clap.

‘No, not yet,’ mimics creepy Martin – clap.

Vivarium’s a creepy movie with flashes of sci-fi and the drama of a couple stuck in what becomes a living hell.  Where they’re left with a child to raise who speaks like a man.

It’s tempting to see the comment of young couples getting trapped into these model houses (the point made by director, Lorcan Finnegan), but to also be trapped into having a family, to be fed upon until left as a dry husk…  But raising a family gives back as much as it takes (I’m generalising here).  A Cuckoo bird?  It just takes.

It’s like a survival story where I’d be trying the same things to escape those endless fake green houses and the screaming not-boy.

“I am not your mother,” says Gemma.  Yet she continues to feed him, wash him, put him to bed.

The bulk of the story is the relationship between Tom and Gemma, the tidy build of pressure as time outside of the normal world takes from them more than physical labour or starvation, it’s the psychological toll of living somewhere else that destroys.  The monotony poisons, as the cuckoo bird takes what’s left.

“That’s nature, that’s just the way things are.”

A bleak film, but thoroughly absorbing.

Come to Daddy

Rated: MA15+Come to Daddy

Directed by: Ant Timpson

Based on an Idea by: Ant Timpson

Story by: Toby Harvard

Starring: Elijah Wood, Stephen McHattie, Garfield Wilson, Madeleine Sami, Martin Donovan, Michael Smiley, Simon Chin, Ona Grauer, Ryan Beil.

Based on the idea from William Shakespeare, ‘The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children,’ Come to Daddy has city boy, Norval (Elijah Wood) dragging a silver suitcase through the woods to visit a father who abandoned him when he was five years old.

Dragging his suitcase, he loses his hat.

It’s the beginning of his exposure as being, ‘Full of shit.’

He knocks on the door, ‘Dad, it’s me.  Norval.’

And I wondered how many layers there would be to Norval, to the story, as the mystery of this, Dad becomes more obscure.

What we get is a violent kooky comedy that skirts the line between mystery and weird, the screenplay like a story written by a uni student with father issues.  Which is fine, but it translated like a bad dream rather than a story for a movie because of the many red herrings.

Elija Wood as Norval does a lot of the heavy lifting, being the only ‘normal’ character in the film.

Including a cop describing liars as having ‘raisin eyes’, and a coroner who has ‘no filter’ and no real role in the film.  But I guess that’s true to life, the random strangers that make an appearance, then exit.

I don’t want to give too much away as there are unexpected turns making the film feel original.

But there are more strange moments as the mystery of this unpredictable and alcoholic father are revealed, that don’t quite add up, taking away the already tenuous grasp on that suspension of reality.

To add to that strangeness of gore and obscure, the scenery and setting is beautiful; the beach house, a stilted house overlooking the sea, my favourite part of the film, and aptly described by Norval as, ‘A UFO from the 1960s’.  Cool, right?

And some moments are kinda cool and funny – I say skirting, because the film doesn’t completely cross the line into the bizarre, but there just isn’t enough to stack-up making, Come to Daddy more puzzling than surprising.

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