Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Cyrus Neshvad
Starring: Malik Zidi, Brigitte Urhausen, Lydia Indjova, Anne Klein, Dmytro Yaroshenko
This Luxembourgish production is a thriller in the tradition of movies like Walter Hill's Trespass and Fede Alvarez's Don't Breathe, with immoral protagonists venturing to a location intent on pulling off some nefarious deed, only to find themselves battling fierce and unexpected foes. Child also owes a debt to the setup of many classic EC Comics stories, and with its brief runtime of 75 minutes it plays like an extended episode of Tales from the Crypt, albeit one with all the black comedy removed.
The idea of who exactly is Child's protagonist is rather fluid, the film shifting its perspective and questioning our allegiance at several points. Initially the focus is on Greg (Malik Zidi), a doctor whose own son Leo (Leo Tedesco) is in critical condition at his hospital after being hit by a car. Leo is reliant on an organ transplant to survive, and Greg's (ex?) wife Anne (Brigitte Urhausen) has found a donor in an unnamed Eastern European country.
The bickering Greg and Anne make the journey to the ambiguous destination, where Greg is shocked to discover the true horror that Anne has withheld from him. Rather than an official medical facility, the couple are escorted to a makeshift tent in the middle of remote woodland. The "donor" is a young girl who was abducted and sliced open for her valuable organs, her stitched-up corpse lying on a table. As Greg argues with Anne over the morality of their actions, the child's mother, Lydia (Lydia Indjova), bursts in, guns blazing. Grabbing the vital organ, Greg and Anne flee into the woods.
What ensues is initially a survival thriller along the lines of Deliverance. But the city slickers vs country bumpkins dynamic is complicated by the former being the ones we struggle to root for while the latter earns our sympathy. Writer/director Cyrus Neshvad constructs a challenging morality play that forces us to ask ourselves what we might do in Greg and Anne's situation. If we're honest we may not like our answer. The average parent will turn into an amoral sociopath when their children are threatened, so it's not that hard to believe that Anne would commit such an immoral and unethical act. On the other hand, Lydia is very much the wronged party here, and a more easily digestible version of this tale would have posited her as the straight-up protagonist. The only reason we have to root for Greg and Anne to make it home is the inescapable fact that if they don't, a second child will die.
There are hints that something supernatural might be at play when the couple seek refuge in an abandoned home. It all gets a bit Brothers Grimm when it's revealed that Lydia isn't all they have to worry about. Someone or something else doesn't want them to leave the woods.
Child functions better as a morality play than a thriller. It's never quite as tense as it might be, largely because it's so difficult to root for Greg and Anne. We find ourselves torn between wanting them to get their comeuppance but also recognising that Leo is the innocent party in all this, and that his life hangs on his parents surviving their ordeal. A lot more suspense could have been mined from the precarious organ in Anne's hands, something the film largely loses sight of rather than integrating its fragility into the plot. Child is watchable enough, but its submission as Luxembourg's Oscar entry is hopeful to say the least.
Child is in UK cinemas from October 2nd.
