Any man can be a father; not every man can be a daddy. In the dystopian satire Daddy, men have to prove their worth or be sterilized. Set not too far in the future, it’s hard to tell if it’s a religious restriction or authoritarian common sense. Co-writer/director Neal Kelley’s Andrew quotes scripture a lot, but the other men being tested alongside him don’t seem to be too concerned about religion.
Why has all this come down upon the US? The film never quite makes it clear. Except for making every citizen undergo fitness trials for parenthood, it all looks pretty much the same. Jeremy (co-writer/director Jono Sherman) undergoes a verbal exam from F.R.A.N.N. (Britt Baron), phase one before being sent off to a Men’s Retreat. What do the questions mean? Despite being a glowing orb, F.R.A.N.N. leaves Andrew in the dark.
The retreat itself seems to be somewhere in the Sierras, a gorgeous mountain cabin fully stocked with food and other necessities. Checking in their smartphones before the retreat, four fatherhood candidates are cut off from civilization and (perhaps) forced into radical empathy. On a bookshelf, there’s a baby doll, and the film veers into parodying high school parenting programs. Except it’s clear that each man has their own reason for being there, and like many bumbling toward fatherhood, they haven’t worked out how they really feel.
Believing they will have a facilitator that they call a Monitor, they’re uneasy that no one has shown up who isn’t undergoing the evaluation themselves. The seemingly hyper-masculine Sebastian (Yuri Sardarov) discovers that the cabin has several hidden cables, so it’s possible they’re just being observed from a remote location. Or one of them is the Monitor.
Daddy eschews science fiction trappings and only lightly explores the dark details of its dystopia when a woman shows up among them. Not sure who Ally (Jacqueline Toboni) might really be, they lie about why they’re all gathered in this retreat. She claims that her car broke down a way down the mountain, or maybe it was an accident. Her story shifts a bit, just as theirs do. And whatever agreement the four have reached among themselves to try not to give in to toxic masculinity, it may be more delicate than they thought.
In some places predictable, it’s still reasonably fun and if you like your satire dark, reasonably funny. Daddy also recognizes some harsh truths, as even among the four, alliances shift quickly and the truth rarely gets told. But thankfully, it doesn’t tell us what the truth is, a film willing to challenge its audience to draw their own conclusions. It should spark conversation, and that’s worth a lot.
Anyone can make a movie; not everyone can make a film. With Daddy, Kelley and Sherman have proven they’re in the latter category.
