We can slander Freud and make all the memes we want about him, but the man wasn’t wrong about Daddy issues. Ant Timpson’s “Come to Daddy” is a sublime take on the subject, which is pretty easy to guess by the title. Elijah Wood with his bowl cut and shabby moustache delivers one of his best performances in a movie which is mostly ignored by the mainstream audience. “Come to Daddy” is a fun, raunchy, slightly scary comedy that managed to keep me entertained and psyched throughout the runtime, and here follows a summary of the film.
Come to Daddy (2019) Plot Summary and Movie Synopsis:
Why does Norval visit his Dad?
So first things first, despite having a deadbeat father who abandoned Norval when he was five, the kid grew up in a pretty loaded household in Beverly Hills. When he finally gets a letter from his father decades later, Norval decides to give it a shot. Far out on the west coast of Vancouver, Norval goes through the woods and the coastlines to reach his dad’s place.
He’s met by a warm hug from Brian, the absentee Daddy, who is kind to Norval at this very moment. We quickly see how Brian is mostly a drunk who claims to be retired, and it’s clear that he doesn’t really want Norval to be around him. Norval starts to tell Brian about his life, and it’s pretty evident that Brian isn’t impressed by it. Norval’s gold edition cellphone is just another toy for Brian, and Norval’s alcohol dependency issues are something of an amusement to him.
Brian pours himself a big glass of wine right before the son who tried to kill himself not too long ago, and it keeps getting downhill. Brian doesn’t miss any opportunity to pull his son down. Later that night, Norval overhears Brian talking on the phone, discussing possible leverage and whatnot, and Norval just pretends to be asleep and keeps himself in denial about everything that’s been happening. Hell finally breaks loose when Norval and Brian get into an argument and Brian chases Norval with a meat cleaver. Fortunately for Norval, Brian gets a heart attack and falls dead on the ground before any damage is caused. Norval is puzzled to process the shifting of events in a jiffy, and Brian dying was only the beginning of a chain of events that was about to change Norval’s life forever.
What tempts Norval to start drinking again?
After an extremely weird interrogation by the town Sheriff, Norval is declared innocent because he doesn’t have the ‘raisin eyes.’ But the Sheriff does mention that Brian has this specific set of eyes, which means he might have been a bad person. Anyhow, the coroners couldn’t keep the corpse and Norval has to keep it until his mom arrives for the last rites. This whole situation is creepy for an average person, and the fact that Norval almost got killed by the recently deceased doesn’t make it any easier.
Norval is scared of the weird metallic noises at night, and he fears that his dead father might’ve been doing that. He also gets a call but the caller doesn’t say anything after Norval answers. To make things worse, he notices a suspicious man lurking around the house. All of these things weigh heavy on Norval and he finally pours himself a drink to let loose. He eventually goes on to finish an entire bottle, and his night ends with him on top of his father’s corpse, cursing him left, right, and center.
What were the noises that Norval heard?
Norval finds a secret drawer in the wall of his room and out comes a photo album of his childhood. But here’s a shocker, the picture of Norval’s dad doesn’t match with the guy in the body bag. The realization hits him hard, and pretty soon he finds a secret door to the basement, the source of the noises he keeps hearing. He finds a chained man who happens to be the actual father, Brian. Brian tells Norval that he needs to kill the people who are coming from him, and a confused Norval hides in a closet with a barbell as a weapon, hoping for the best.
A man named Jethro makes his way down to the basement, and he asks Brian about a secret stash of money. It’s evident by now that Brian is being held because he has stolen the money, and Jethro injects him with an injection containing feces. When Brian shouts and instructs Norval to kill Jethro, Norval gets his ass kicked by the much larger man. Jethro leaves, but he threatens to come back again, and Norval somehow tries to set Brian free from the chain. After Brian instructs Norval to break three of his fingers, Norval figures out the chain could’ve been unhooked pretty easily.
Why was Brian being targeted by his own friends?
The pretend father who died earlier was a man named Gordon, and Jethro happens to be Brian’s best friend. There’s also another guy in the mix named Dandy, and all three of them were friends of Brian after he abandoned his family and started a little criminal chain in Hong Kong. They decided to pull off a last crime that would help them retire and sail off for good.
They kidnapped the daughter of Hong Kong’s richest person. But Brian decided to take the ransom money all for himself, and it makes sense the other guys want their share. When Norval asks where the fortune went, Brian asks him a simple question in return. Norval and his unemployed mother stay in a mansion in Beverly Hills, living a quiet luxurious life, Brian asks him where Norval thinks the money came from. It all starts to make sense now, and now the father-son duo must make a run for their lives.
Come to Daddy (2019) Movie Ending Explained:
How does Norval kill Dandy?
All set to get the hell out of the horror house, Norval decides to use the washroom before running. But to his surprise, he sees a big bald guy taking a dump. Dandy, as it turns out, wants to kill Norval right there. He throws Norval like a rag doll all over the kitchen, and Brian cries out loud begging Norval to kill the guy. It ends with Norval using a barbecue fork to stab Dandy’s genitals and wrapping his head in saran wrap. Norval finishes him off by smashing his head to a paste, and just like that, the big-shot music producer is now a murderer as well.
Brian and Norval leave the house, but they see Jethro’s car approaching. Jethro is not kidding around this time, the guy has come with a flaming crossbow. The next move is officially the most absurd plan I’ve ever seen in a movie (excluding foolish slasher flicks), as Brian suggests that Norval should hide in Jethro’s car and kill him when the opportunity presents itself. Norval doesn’t have much of a choice there, since Jethro has found his Beverly Hills address from the luggage tag.
Can Norval Outsmart His Enemies and Survive the Night?
Jethro gets inside the car and calls someone named Precious, hoping to book a ‘session’ to relieve some of his stress. Now the quotes aren’t a mistake, you can’t be thinking a man like Jethro is seeing his therapist in the middle of the night. Jethro ends up in a motel, and Norval waits right outside to think of a way to kill the guy. He can’t handle the crossbow, so he instead pleads with the lady named Precious to let him inside the room. Precious isn’t much impressed, and she scares Norval off. Norval then manages to distract the reception guy and sneaks inside another room adjacent to Jethro’s.
Three naked men and one naked lady were sleeping tight inside the room, but Norval’s antics interrupted their sweet post-nut dreams. He somehow gets the door opened which reveals Precious head locking Jethro with her thighs, and Precious comes right at Norval and takes him down. Norval is defenseless and physically restrained by the strong lady, and Jethro stabs him a few times before putting a hairpin right across his face. Thinking he’s dead, Jethro soon exits, hoping that Precious will have to take the fall.
Norval’s Final Confrontation: Ending the Nightmare Once and for All
But Norval punctured the car tires earlier, and Jethro crashes the car within a minute of taking off. Norval survives the hairpin and multiple stabs, and if Precious isn’t the happiest person in the room I don’t know who is. He follows Jethro to find that a big arrow sign crashed into the car, and sliced a part of Jethro’s head off. Jethro wasn’t inside the car though, he was walking on the road in his final moments. He tells Norval that his mother is actually a sex worker and that’s how his father met her. Jethro even claims that he used to sleep with his mother, and I think it’s pretty fair that Norval takes the hairpin out of his face and shoves it inside the sliced head of Jethro to eliminate the last threat to his family.
How did that one letter change Norval’s life?
Norval didn’t need to respond to a letter from his father – a father he can’t recognize himself. But as all the great Greek tragedies suggest, the protagonist follows the path which leads to their doom. When Brian asks Norval to kill Jethro, he refuses to murder a man, not realizing he killed another guy a few minutes ago. The lengths one goes to for their father’s approval isn’t that uncommon, and Norval didn’t have much of a choice either.
He killed and conspired for his father, and in the closing moments of the film, he finally confesses something he meant to say long ago. Norval never let his mother move on from Brian, and he made sure to drive every man away from his mother. Brian, half dead, holds the hand of his dear boy, and the two sit almost lifeless, staring at the sea. Norval never got the answer to his question, why did his dad want to see him? It’s best that we come up with our own interpretations for that, as the ending is clearly asking the audience to contemplate that.
