Metacritic reviews

My favorite horror offering of the year so far. It’s smart, uncompromising, inventive and just downright hilarious.

No matter its oddball turns, Kiwi director Ant Timpson’s wild, unpredictable debut manages to deliver a gory hilarious father-son reunion saga with a surprising degree of confidence in the silly-strange nature of the material.

Come To Daddy is definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. ... Provocative and ballsy ... [the film] doesn’t give a shit if you like it and perhaps even dares some audiences to sit through it unfettered. Ultimately, it knows that those who stay are on its weirdo wavelength and are in for something insanely entertaining.

Given the minimal – albeit excellent – cast and the film’s maximal rollercoaster of shifty mood swings and its increasingly paranoiac atmosphere of disorienting dread, it’s no wonder Come to Daddy lingers in the mind long after the final, emotionally revelatory denouement.

Unlike many [M. Night] Shyamalan films, which seem constructed out of Mad Libs, Come to Daddy retains an emotional consistency.

Absurd yet bold, lurid yet a tiny bit touching, Come to Daddy drags poor Norval from hopefulness to horror to a wickedly literal form of closure. More than a few audience members might even be happy to accompany him.

A gonzo, gory and goofball B-movie about fathers, sons and killing or being killed.

Come to Daddy has twists galore, not to mention a heavy dose of gore, but the further it drifts from its initial understated dynamic, the less each successive development seems to matter.

Moderately funny and strangely dated ... The blend of tired jokes and body horror here seems entombed in amber, as every lacerated scalp, loudly broken limb, and use of the C-word makes it feel that much less original.

Come to Daddy starts out like a nasty drama, ends up as a gruesomely gory, coldly comic revenge thriller – and desperately loses its way somewhere in-between.