In this interview conducted for Letterboxd News, I chat to the producer-turned-director behind the new darkly comedic thriller starring Elijah Wood.

In the general flow of the movie industry, not a lot of producers make the shift to directing. But for New Zealander Ant Timpson, it seems like a natural move.

His unique genre predilections have long shone through in his producing credits, which include titles such as Housebound, The ABCs of Death (and its sequel), Turbo Kid, Deathgasm, The Field Guide to Evil, and the instantly iconic cult oddity The Greasy Strangler. Those predilections extend somewhat into his directorial debut, the darkly comedic new thriller Come To Daddy.

Scripted by The Greasy Strangler co-writer Toby Harvard, Come To Daddy is based on an idea from Timpson, who was “inspired” by his reaction to the death of his own father. As he articulates in this captivating blog post, the week Timpson spent in a house with his father’s body learning things he never knew about his dad not only sparked the plot of Come To Daddy, but also prompted Timpson to re-engage his long-held desire to direct movies.

In the resulting film, Elijah Wood (who worked alongside Timpson as a producer on The Greasy Strangler, and has put in his fair share of work hours in New Zealand) stars as Norval, a 30-ish hipster layabout who travels to a remote seaside home to meet with with the father he hasn’t seen since he was a child.

Norval’s reunion with pop (played by Canadian great Stephen McHattie) starts awkwardly, then gets increasingly weird, and soon mortal peril is in play.

Following the film’s well-received world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, Timpson and Wood sat down with Letterboxd for a two-on-one to talk about Come To Daddy.