Direction: Ant Timpson
Country: USA
Elijah Wood stars in Ant Timpson’s feature film debut, as an emotionally wounded musician who finally meets the father who abandoned him when he was only five. After unmemorable appearances in The Last Witch Hunter (2015) and The Trust (2016), Wood had a promising return with I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017), Macon Blair’s first directorial experience. He did a pretty decent job in Come To Daddy, and it wasn’t his fault that this comedy thriller - filled with cynical lies, wry humor, dark secrets, and violent romps - didn’t impress me all that much.
The screenplay by Toby Harvard carries a number of good intentions, but few of them materialize favorably. Norval Greenwood’s stay at his father’s secluded lakefront cabin in Oregon comes with lots of traps and manipulation. And that was exactly how I felt while watching it - trapped in nonsense and manipulated by artificial maneuvers.
Timpson wanted his film to look weird and wild, but because the lopped storyline is nothing special and the humor is unremarkable, the film goes off the rails sooner than later. He had no other option than using the violent scenes as a lifeline.
Sadly, the positive atmospheric set-up terminates abruptly with the first death. The film never fulfills the potential offered by a farcical yet mysterious inception. And then we have these ridiculous scenes involving slaughterous manhunts that feel more exasperating than frightening.
