Elijah Wood returns to New Zealand for the charming father-daughter adventure Bookworm

New Zealand’s Ant Timpson has been quietly but confidently carving out quite a niche in the genre film circuit. As a writer and producer he helped birth the ABCs Of Death project, and shepherded the likes of cult classic Turbo Kid by the RKSS team and Jason Lei Howden’s wild Deathgasm. His directorial debut, 2019’s Come To Daddy, starred fellow genre film evangelist Elijah Wood (with whom Timpson collaborated on nutty Sundance flick The Greasy Strangler) in a bleakly comic thriller about a child reconnecting with an estranged parent. For his sophomore directorial effort, Timpson once again collaborates with Wood and screenwriter Toby Harvard, resulting in Bookworm, another parent and child tale with a very different modality. 

What’s perhaps most surprising for those weaned on the outré filmography of Timpson is that this time around we’re treated to a PG-13 adventure story about a young girl and her biological father wandering the wilderness of New Zealand’s South Island. For those who have missed seeing Wood traipsing through the woods of this beautiful nation, they’re in for a treat. Craggy rocks, lush forests, and otherworldly vistas seemingly come easy for such Kiwi productions, and while echoes of Middle-earth’s aesthetic are certainly present, Bookworm is more than a mere travelogue showing off these pretty places.

The film begins with Mildred (played to perfection by Evil Dead Rise’s Nell Fisher), a bookish, brash preteen, attempting to coax her black pet cat into a trap. This is all practice for a larger quest, where a $50,000 prize for capturing an image of an aloof panther in the wilderness can help set her mother’s financial situation right. After an accident sees her mother hospitalized, her “biological father,” hapless illusionist Strawn Wise (Wood), arrives to take care of a child he’s never met.

Wood’s look is one of the film’s most delightful elements. With a scraggly beard, long hair, and an El Topo-like brim, his goth-magician shtick would have fit in perfectly in the heyday of L.A.’s Viper Room in the ‘90s, but seems completely out of place among the foliage and vistas of New Zealand. Attempts to impress his daughter with feats of prestidigitation fail entirely, with withering comments emitting from his daughter cutting as deeply as any blade.

Using her innate guile and powers of persuasion, Mildred soon convinces her father to go off into the wilderness on a hunt for this elusive creature, using all of her book-learned knowledge to prepare for the journey. With a tent, map, fishing pole, and a brain filled with esoteric understandings of a world that hitherto she only knew from the written page, the two set off on a journey into the unknown.

Bookworm is hardly the first time audiences have seen a precocious young girl having the better of their elders, and one can look to anything from Little Miss Sunshine to Matilda for overt echoes. Yet, tonally, Bookworm leans in a more surreal and sardonic direction, with the goofiness of, say, the Kurt Russell late-1960s Disney films like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes combined with the brilliant odd-couple banter in Midnight Run.

But while the emotionality and character aspects of the film work fabulously well, the other trappings are less successful. The MacGuffin with the photo prize is hoary at best, distracting at worst, and one can’t help but think that there may have been a more organic way of inciting these characters into the wild—perhaps simply out of guilt, with Mildred manipulating this new adult in her life to do something she’s always read about but never actualized. I get that the film needed a narrative hook to rest the plot upon, but the realization of the predatory panther isn’t nearly as effective as the rest of the storyline.

On the other hand, I was particularly pleased how Timpson and team handled the hijinks surrounding some errant interrupters. Michael Smiley and Vanessa Stacey provide some quietly chilling moments involving a mugging and feigned abduction that are still suitable for younger viewers, only for buffoonery to inevitably ensue. There’s a degree of restraint in the initial shift in their characters that’s quite wonderfully played, especially when the father figure is left at his most hapless. The resulting events could have dissolved into hysterics or even existentialist ennui like with Force Majeure, but instead we’re given yet another mode in which father and daughter can learn from one another.

It’s Wood’s unique performance that most delights, his gormlessness utterly believable yet open for when he must step up and be the practicable parent. There’s a nice meta conversation between the role of Norbert in the far bleaker Come To Daddy and this parental take that’s positively effervescent in comparison. This is the first time the baby-faced Wood has shifted from being in the role of the child to portraying a parental figure, fitting given he himself is now a father. What works well here is that the same inversion is in place—the precocious child is far more in charge than the magic man suffering from a severe case of arrested development. When things do settle, and the two connect as they inevitably do in films of this nature, it’s all the more pleasing given how twisty the trail has been.

Yet none of this would work if it wasn’t for an engaging performance by Fisher, and it’s here that one can witness a star-making turn. Bookworm must skate a knife’s edge between broad and believable, and Fisher’s at the center of that balancing act. She must play precocious right up to the edge of obnoxiousness, and clever without being cartoonish in her abilities. If Mildred comes across as shrill the whole magic trick collapses, yet she needs to get under her dad’s skin not simply out of normal young girl malice, but to knock her dad out of his own childish stupor so that he takes up the mantle of the protective, responsible father. Days before the film’s premiere, Fisher was announced as one of the newest cast members on Stranger Things, which is sure to propel her stature even further, making this performance feel that much more like you’re witnessing her talents before the world catches on.

If you go into Bookworm expecting more of the same chills and thrills from Timpson and his collaborators, you may be put off by this far more accessible tale. Yet, peering closer, you can see reflections of the same rich emotional and character beats that have always been lingering within the more sordid genre trappings of Timpson’s previous work. Stripped to its bare essentials, Timpson has crafted a kids’ story that works for adults, bringing enough of his trademark weirdness to elevate this adventure journey in captivating ways. Like Taika Waititi’s Hunt For The Wilderpeople or Boy, Timpson continues a Kiwi tradition of mixing broadly comic and emotionally deep tonalities, unafraid to swing to near-slapstick levels only to dial it back for scenes of profound subtlety. For those willing to go along for such a journey, Bookworm may well worm its way into your heart.

Director: Ant Timpson
Writer: Toby Harvard
Starring: Elijah Wood, Michael Smiley, Nell Fisher
Release Date: July 18, 2024 (Fantasia Film Festival)