Ant Timpson's Come to Daddy

Each week, Drew creates a watchlist with film recommendations provided by you, the tnmn community.

Last week’s category: sick day movies. The results are posted to our website and Letterboxd account every week.

This week’s category: 90’s movies. Reply to this email with your submission and why we should watch it. We’ll feature it in next week’s newsletter.¹

¹ If your submission doesn't comply with the category, I will become a plumber. I’ll apprentice for the best plumbers in the land, and I’ll become proficient enough to complete weeks of work in a matter of days. The next time you go on vacation, I’ll come over to your house and renovate all of your bathrooms — free of charge. The craftsmanship will be remarkable, because the plumbers I apprenticed with also did their own carpentry, tiling, and finishing work. You’ll have this thought: maybe that video application I sent into HGTV landed with one of those surprise renovation shows. How lucky! You’ll wait patiently for one of the Property Brothers to emerge. But they won’t. Then, you’l take a closer look at the bathrooms and notice peculiarities. Like, all of the bathtubs have been removed from your house. This will most certainly diminish its resale value. You’ll also notice that all of your toilets have been replaced with voice-activated toilet-bidet combos. So, you’ll have to like, tell your toilet to open in order to use it. That’s the only way it opens — otherwise the seats are locked in the down position. So, ya know. Follow the category.

A spoiler-free description of the movie.

A man visits with his father after a lifetime of estrangement.

If you like these things, then you’ll like the film.

→ Elijah Wood. If you haven’t been following his career since The Lord of the Rings, you should know — the man has taste.

→ Eccentric dialogue. The dialogue isn’t quite as peculiar as in Riley Stearns films like Dual or The Art of Self Defense. But it’s similar at times.

→ Blood.² This is more of a thriller-comedy than a horror film. But there is lots of blood in the second half of the movie.

² It’s strange to like blood. Gross. What’s wrong with you? I reflected on this, as one does in 2025, with a very rash Google search — the results of which I under-examined to a criminal extent. The search landed me on this StackExchange, where someone asked the very question that was obviously on my mind: “Is there a word for someone who loves blood but is not a vampire?”. The answer, of course, is yes. The first responder in the StackExchange tried to make a joke about how haemophiliac should be the word for this — but it is already taken by the genetic disorder that prohibits the body from making clots. The most upvoted answer identified Sanguinarian as the proper term. This is the designation for an apparent subculture of people who drink blood and refer to themselves as vampires. Apparently, if you google it, there’s a lot of writing about it. I did not (google it). The answer also makes mention of the zoological term, Hematophage. Though, this is a term used to describe creatures in nature that feed on the blood of other beings. Derived from the latin haemo (blood) and phagus (eater of). Also apparently — lots of writing about this, if you google it. I know all of this, and now you do too.

What I liked about it.

Ant Timpson’s Come to Daddy is a bloodied, demented rumination on the father-son relationship. The way we often mythologize our fathers. Or ignore who they are in favor of who we want them to be.

By diving deep into this most complex relationship through the lens of a pulpy genre film — Timpson comes up with marvelously fun film, gushing with visual metaphor.

No surprise — Toby Harvard’s incisive, twisty script finds a perfect mouthpiece in Elijah Wood. There’s a specific, rhythmic nature to the dialogue that feels like the devilish offspring between the pens of Yorgos Lanthimos and Riley Stearns.

And the great Elijah Wood is the singularly doe-eyed, deadpan delivery vessel for some of the most offbeat lines of dialogue in recent film history. So, he’s certainly up to the task in Come to Daddy.

After watching his performance in the film, I found myself wondering what life would be like if I tumbled into an inter dimensional wormhole and entered an alternate universe where Elijah Wood was the only actor.

So like, instead of actors, we just had Elijah Wood(s). And every film was just a bunch of Elijah Woods playing opposite each other. I didn’t hate it.

Because every Elijah Wood did a spectacular job. Every performance was detailed, varied, and positively absorbing. Most noteworthy were his turns as Dorothy, the lion, the tin man, and the scarecrow in the original Wizard of Oz film.

And Elijah Wood brought a depth to his Wicked Witch of the West character that gives the original Broadway production of Wicked a run for its money.

Back to reality. In Come to Daddy, opposite Wood is an unnerving Stephen McHattie — who earns every ounce of Wood’s trepidation as his estranged, rough-around-the-edges father figure.

As the film progresses, it cycles through a peculiar cast of quirky, oft-violent characters who fuel the mystery thriller through its modest hour and a half runtime.

The sound edit adds a sense of despair and confusion — notably highlighting noises you might expect from a decaying cabin exposed to the salty ocean elements by which it’s surrounded.

And cinematographer Daniel Katz pieces together some hauntingly dark, textured compositions. Particularly arresting is a glowing, confrontational fireplace discussion between Wood and McHattie.

The more films I watch, the more I’ve come to enjoy the ones like Come to Daddy.

Stories with big ideas about love, grief, and relationships — unafraid to confront them through less literal means. Scripts that don’t take themselves too seriously. Films that deliver the provocative, fun, silly, and emotional in equal measure.

Enjoy the film.

A fact or two about the production that makes you say “oh, neat.”

→ The film was inspired by the director’s own experience with his father's death. “Dad drops dead in front of me [and] I spend a week with his corpse in a coffin in his house alone at night,” the director recalls. “During the day, strangers come, pay their respects, and I start thinking that maybe there’s an alternate history to my father. The whole process was cathartic and beautiful and creepy and sad.”

→ Elijah Wood and director Timpson both broke their ankles during the shoot. The film’s location was surrounded by rocky terrain. Timpson says. “So for quite a while, I was in a chair with a megaphone, actually. The sound department gave me a mic and put speakers on the camera, so I’d be communicating to the actors like that…”

→ The filming location was, coincidentally, built by a father and son. The house where the movie was filmed on Vancouver Island was built by the McDiarmid family. The filmmakers discovered this when meeting with the McDiarmids, who owned the property and the adjacent Wickannish Inn hotel.³

³ You can stay at this hotel. I actually think it looks really nice, and I might plan a surprise trip there with my wife. Oh shit. She reads these emails. It can’t be a surprise. Or maybe she doesn’t read them. I’ll find out now, I guess — if she mentions this footnote to me later this week.

One great line of dialogue from the film.

tnmn is member-supported. Right now, the very best way to support us is to contribute to our tip jar or share us with a friend.