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| image courtesy Shudder |
There’s no shortage of horror movies where a parent fears their child is the spawn of the devil. Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen...we’ve seen it all before, and done masterfully well. Unfortunately for Ivan Kavanaugh’s Son, it pales in comparison to its predecessors thanks to a few missteps.
While it doesn’t sound like a carbon copy of the prototypical hellspawn film, it doesn’t necessarily feel original, either. Laura (Andi Matichak) has had a troubled past. She escaped from a cult as a child, and now must protect her own from them. After they try to abduct her son David (Luke David Blumm) while he’s sleeping, he begins to show signs of a mysterious illness doctors aren’t able to explain. As David’s condition grows worse, she begins to realize he has something sinister influencing him, and she does everything she can to satisfy his dark compulsions and keep him safe from the cult, all the while coming to terms with what she might have actually birthed.
The cast of Son does a solid job here. Andi Matichak — better known for her role in 2018’s Halloween — gives an outstanding performance as a genuinely kindhearted woman who will do anything for her son, filled with desperation and haunted by her traumatic past. Luke David Blumm commands the screen when he is afflicted by his strange ailment with genuinely disturbing convulsions and screams. Long-time actor Emile Hirsch rounds out the cast as a detective named Paul, and brings sincerity to this character who sympathizes with Laura and her son, fighting to protect them as best he can. While the story has its weak points, the strength of the lead actors solidifies the film.
The main issue of the film is it focuses on the wrong aspects — or at the very least, doesn’t explore the more intriguing ones enough. David’s medical issues receive a great deal of screen time, but the cult aspects are glossed over. While it’s understandable that they wanted to keep an air of mystery about the cult, the narrative would have felt less flat with some extra dimension added to Laura’s tragic backstory. There is also some ambiguity given to the question of her sanity due to some mention of her time in an institution, but it’s not handled in a way that actually keeps the audience actively guessing.
To add to the unevenness of the film, the pacing feels wrong at many key points. It languishes to maintain interest midway through, and then rushes through the climax of the film, which has some of the most visually engaging moments. As a result, it ends up lacking the suspense necessary to propel the narrative forward in a captivating way. While it has plenty of horror elements to flesh it out, the film only occasionally feels like a horror film due to the pacing issues. Worse yet, it falls victim to some horror cliches, so the gory and frightening moments that it does present to us often feel diluted.
Son is a film of missed opportunities. It’s an interesting portrayal of the lengths at which a parent will go to protect their child that looks nice enough and is well-cast, but disappoints more than it impresses. Save yourself the time and watch one of the many films that handled this premise better.
