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| Images courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment |
Newcomer writer-directors Neal Kelley and Jono Sherman put
together some short films throughout the 2010s, starting around 2015 before
finally working up towards their first feature: an Ultra Panavision dystopian
sci-fi yarn called Daddy now being released on Blu-ray disc from Anchor
Bay Entertainment. A tightly wound
chamber piece consisting of four actors and one actress, the film is a
microbudget digital indie in ultra-widescreen 2.76:1 which results in some
striking cinematography by Bryce Holden but the movie feels more like a minimalist
dress rehearsal than a fully fledged feature.
Curious but one wonders whether or not there was enough here to dole out
a ninety-eight-minute feature that’s not really a thriller or a comedy.
In a secluded Californian mountain retreat are four men
government mandated to stay in the retreat with no guidelines or instructions
of what to do once they’ve arrived. The
litmus test seems to involve determining whether or not any of the four men are
capable of raising children. Ultimately
left to their own devices, we’ve got a small quartet of characters who spend a
majority of their time sitting at a dinner table with a rubber baby doll which
they dote on as though it were a living thing.
Somewhere along the way, a woman named Ally (Jacqueline Toboni) shows up
unannounced hungry and thirsty. The men
aren’t sure of what to do and whether or not this girl is in fact ‘The Monitor’,
a guardian of some sort who will come to guide the men towards their respective
destinies.
Torpid and kind of inert, scenic yet flat and dull, Daddy
is the kind of elegantly lensed ultra-widescreen efforts that will likely
only ever been seen on home video. The
equivalent of a backyard movie with good cameras and a Johnny Greenwood
inspired score by Matt Orenstein which gives something, I don’t know, moody
towards the proceedings. While the Blu-ray
extras include the filmmakers’ bonus web series C.U.P.S., the film
itself feels like a glorified padded out internet short which takes some
inexplicable turns along the way. Some
of the character actors in it are notable like Yuriy Sardarov from Argo and
the crusty faced Joseph Lopez and Jacqueline Toboni has been in her fair share
of television shows including Grimm and Easy.
While the Blu-ray comes with an audio commentary by the
filmmakers and co-stars, an extended dance sequence and an improvisation reel, Daddy
just kind of lays there sauntering towards something resembling a
conclusion. The closest thing to any
kind of suspense or action involves a boneheaded decision to lock the stowaway
girl in a room but that is short lived and quickly dispensed with. Yes it looks and sounds nice, but as a film
it feels kind of like a chicken dinner whose bones have been picked clean with
nothing but scraps for us leftover to dine on.
Somewhere in here is an idea vaguely resembling a film, but as it stands
Daddy is unfortunately kind of a dud I’d recommend passing on. A curious if not altogether pointless effort.
--Andrew Kotwicki
