"Come to Daddy": Elijah Wood is Gay for 45 Minutes

The title Come to Daddy, has a creepy, quasi-erotic feel, perfect for a "psychological thriller."  It stars Elijah Wood, who always plays gay-vague roles, and Stephen McHattie, who was hot back in the day, so I'm in.

Prologue: Quotes from Shakespeare and Beyonce?

Scene 1: Ah, wilderness!  A Timberline bus stops amid the big trees to let out a man in a black hat, who turns out to be Norval (Elijah Wood).

He walks through the big trees to a big lake.

He loses his hat, revealing a really stupid bowl-hair cut.  Finally he reaches a very distinctive two-story house shaped like the Jupiter 2 on Lost in Space, with a balcony overlooking the rocks.

How do they get groceries up there? Is there a road?  If so, wouldn't it be easier than the wilderness trek?

Craggy, creepy Dad (Stephen McHattie) answers the door, glaring suspiciously.  Crazy as a loon, Dad takes awhile to catch on that Norval is his long-estranged son, whom he wrote a letter inviting to visit..  Finally Dad invites him in.

Scene 2:  Unpacking in his room, Norval takes his cell phone out of his pocket --close up of his crotch.  Suddenly Dad barges in and asks for a photo. Is it just me, or did that exchange have homoerotic undertones?

Dad "accidentally" drops Norval's cell phone in the ocean, so he can't call anyone.  Uh-oh, 

Scene 3: At dinner, Dad razzes Norval for still living with his mother at his age ("You sleep with her?" he asks).  Then he pushes Norval to drink some wine.  Norval explains that his alcohol dependency led to an attemptd suicide, but Dad continues to push.

Norval hasn't mentioned a wife or girlfriend. The first rule of gay subtexts: if they don't mention a lady, they can be read as gay.  And Dad, although brash and vulgar, is refreshingly free of heterosexual braggadochio -- no "this gal in Shanghai could do things with her tongue!"

Scene 4:  After dinner, the two realize that they know next to nothing about each other, so they exchange bios.  Norval is a famous dj/pianist/musician and a close friend of Sir Elton John (I don't believe that for a second).  Dad a retired limo driver whose main client happened to be Sir Elton.  They got to be very close (implying that they were lovers!  good deal!)

Dad calls Norval's bluff by threatening to call Elton, then reveals that he doesn't know him, either.  Har-har.  This is turning way funnier than I expected from a psychological thriller.

Later, Norval is brushing his teeth when Dad appears, creepily, in the mirror:  "You ever been in a fight? I have.  Knocked a guy's ear off.  You could see right into his skull."  Run, Norvy, run!

Scene 5: In the middle of the night, Norval gets up for a glass of water, and overhears Dad talking on the phone: "What do you want me to do? I'm not going to kill him. We can use him for leverage..."

Norval runs back to his bedroom and pretends to be asleep.  Uh-oh, he's in trouble!

Scene 6: In the morning, instead of high-tailing it out of there as fast as his legs can carry him, Norval calls Mom on the house phone and says "No, he's not what I imagined."

Interspliced with the conversation are scenes of the two swimming (Norval has a nice chest, Dad not so much), Then Norval is taking a bath while Dad talks on the phone: "No, he's dead.  I killed him"

Scene 7:  Norval asks why Dad left when he was five, and why he sent the letter inviting him there.  Dad won't answer. They argue.  Dad razzes Norval for dressing like a woman, and calls him a "cunt" who puts rats up his "vaginia."

This seems to be an adaption of the homophobic urban legend that gay men put gerbils up their butts, shifted to a lady.  But why not just call Norval a "fag"?  Is   Dad going out of his way to avoid seeming homophobic?  But sexism is ok?

Anyway, Dad attacks Norval with a butcher knife, then drops dead.  After calling Mom for advice, Norval covers the body and calls the cornoer.

Scene 8: The next morning, Ronald the Cop arrives (bodybuilder turned actor Garfield Wilson).  He tells Norval that he has nice eyes and tries to impress him by burping (maybe taking off your shirt would be a better strategy, Ronald?).

Scene 9: Hey, what happened to Ronald?  I thought he and Norval would be dating. Now a lady coroner shows up to take the body.  She tells Norval that he has kind eyes.

If they end up dating, I'm leaving. 

Scene 10:  Gladys the Lady Coroner and Norval are walking on the beach together.  Grr.  Oh -- they're just carrying down the body. 

"You're going to be ok..when my husband died, I was a mess..take care of yourself"  That's not flirtatious, is it

Well, is it?

Scene 11: Instead of leaving, Norval has to wait for Mom to arrive.  That night he hears a weird scraping sound.  He hears it again while reading The Celestine Prophecy naked, and again while putting his clothes on.  He looks at Gladys' business card.  And smells it.

 He smells her card?  God, please let there be no fade-out-kiss.

He starts drinking again.  Drunk, he calls Gladys the Coroner Lady and invites her over for sex.  She refuses -- but only because he's being obnoxious.  If he invited her to a nice dinner, she'd probably say yes.

Ok, I'm disgusted.  I'm leaving.  Here's the rest of the plot, from Wikipedia:

Norval investigates the sound, and finds a beaten, bloody man in the basement-- his Real Dad (Martin Donovan)!

This is actually not him, it's a plug from Martin's twitter account of the movie he's directing, The Legs of Infamy, starring Steve McCain.  I'm definitely looking forward to it.

Plot dump: Back in the day, Real Dad, Fake Dad, Jethro (Michael Smiley), and a guy named Dandy (Simon Chin) were involved in a kidnapping.  Real Dad double-crossed them and fled with the money, which he, Mom, and Norval have been living on ever since.

Fake Dad found Real Dad and started torturing him.  At that moment, Norval showed up!  Now the other two guys will be coming to kill them both. But Norval manages to kill one, and the other dies in an accident.  The end.

Frigging gay tease.  But at least there's no fade-out kiss.