Elijah Wood returns to the New Zealand wilderness in Bookworm, the latest from Ant Timpson. Here he plays Strawn Wise, an American magician who returns to look after his estranged daughter. That daughter is Mildred (Nell Fisher, Evil Dead Rise), whose mother is in a coma. Mildred begs Strawn to take her camping in search of the Canterbury Panther. The Cantebury Panther is a legendary mythical beast with a cash reward for video footage of.  This might get her Mum out of debt. No more late night and triple shifts for her.

As Mildred, Fisher delicately balances a coarse exterior and the hints of a wounded interior. Her cutting wit is enough to make any grown-man-cum-wannabe-Dad cry. The caustic edge is pitiful, and also, understandable. Everyone leaves save her mother, who is now trapped in a coma. Thus, Strawn cannot be a father figure to her. He left a long time ago, and he’s likely to leave again. His attempts at magic are foolish, less because magic isn’t real, but rather, because her world has no capacity for magic.

Yet, for Strawn the adventure is an opportunity to reconcile with the daughter that he never knew until recently. He’s a chronic bungler, one who runs from every hardship. Magician is a profession that connotatively works extremely well in Bookworm. As a child, a magician is cool, the bringer of illusions. As an adult, there’s always a nagging question at the back of your head: how, exactly, does one become a magician? Fair or not – and probably not to be honest, a magician requires real talent as a performer – magician is not exactly a profession that earns a lot of respect.

Clearly, the panther is a McGuffin of the tallest order; the real treasure is the father-daughter relationships we repair along the way. It’s tough to pin down a genre that Bookworm would fit under: adventure, horror, western, you name it, it probably fits. Personally, I’d dub the film a road movie, the journey itself having healing properties. Cinematographer Daniel Katz beautifully augments the duo with copious landscape shots. It’s not difficult to make New Zealand look good; Katz does so to an extent it is important to mention.

Timpson probably wants the film to mimic adventure films of old. The film works best as explorative of the relationship between Mildred and Strawn. In an interview with In the Seats, Timpson mentioned that the film occasionally has the affect of a Kelly Reichardt film. It’s a comparison that works when it centers around the innumerable campfire sequences, but maybe is less apt in light of the film’s many action sequences. The film climax gets to a point that is so large is doesn’t really fit the scope of the film. All of these are minor quibbles. Bookworm really works, if only because the film has such a cogent emotional core to it, one which it sticks to. Reichardt and say, Romancing the Stone, are not exactly coterminous, but the film finds that liminal space in-between those two poles.

Ultimately, Wood and Fisher are excellent together, their chemistry allowing them to riff off of each other seemingly at will. I damn near cried at the end of this thing, an incredible illusion if there ever was one. You want to be fooled; you could be if you surrendered to the magic.