When her son is stricken by a mysterious condition, a young mother
believes the cult she once fled from has caught up with her.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Ivan Kavanagh
Starring: Andi Matichak, Emile Hirsch, Luke David Blumm, Cranston Johnston, Blaine Maye
Writer/director Ivan Kavanagh's Son belongs to the
tradition of supernatural thrillers in which a parent takes to the road
with a child gifted with paranormal powers – think the Stephen King
adaptation Firestarter, or more recently, Jeff Nichols'
Midnight Special. The difference here is that it seems as though the child in question
may very well pose a significant threat to the world. No mother wants to
believe such a thing, which is why Laura (Andi Matichak) takes
flight with her eight-year-old son David (Luke David Blumm).
As detailed in a prologue that riffs on the opening of
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, a teenage Laura escapes from a cult while pregnant with David. Eight
years later, she seems to have made a life for herself and her boy.
She's got a comfortable suburban home, a job as a pre-school teacher,
and is studying to better herself with evening classes.
One night Laura hears noises coming from David's bedroom. Opening his
door, she is shocked to find a large group of people gathered around the
boy's bed. Laura runs to a neighbour for help, but when the police
arrive they can't find any signs of forced entry. Just as Laura is
beginning to question her sanity, David begins spasming and vomiting
blood. Rushed to hospital, David is examined by doctors who are left
baffled by his condition. After a few days, David seems to make a
miracle recovery, only for the mysterious condition to strike him once
more.
Paranoid that the doctors are somehow linked to the cult she
fled, Laura snatches David from his bed and hides him with a neighbour.
But when she finds David feeding on the innards of said neighbour, Laura
makes the gory scene look like the work of the cult, daubing the cryptic
message "He is coming", along with a runic symbol, on the wall in the
victim's blood. The two hit the road in search of answers to David's
ailment, pursued by a police detective, Paul (Emile Hirsch), who
has taken a personal shine to Laura.
Kavanagh's script is clouded in ambiguity regarding Laura's sanity, her
son's condition, and whether the cult she believes she fled from ever
actually existed. Aside from the people glimpsed in David's bedroom,
we're never given any evidence of the cult's existence. They certainly
don’t seem to be chasing her, leaving Laura pursued only by Paul, who
poses no threat. As such, there's practically no chase in this chase
thriller, and few thrills either. Instead what we get is a dreary cousin
of Neil Jordan's vampire tale
Byzantium, as a mother attempts to protect her vampiric offspring while
indulging their unique dietary requirements. The movie takes itself
very, very seriously, and with so much of its drama revolving around
childhood trauma, it's an often unpleasant experience.
It's all very well put together, with Kavanagh and cinematographer
Piers McGrail drawing on '80s genre cinema with their neon-tinged
colour scheme, and Matichak gets the chance to show her acting chops in
a far meatier role than that afforded her as the forgettable heroine of
the recent
Halloween
reboot. But it all feels too familiar. We've seen this sort of thing
before, just not played out in such dour fashion.
