‘I’m hungry…’
I’ve got a lot of time for the concept of Shudder. A streaming service devoted entirely to horror should be right up my street, and while it has produced a few moments of ingenuity, namely Host, The Mortuary Collection and Terrified, it has yet to fully imprint itself on the public consciousness in the same way as Blumhouse, Twisted Pictures or Hammer Horror has. Perhaps it’s better this way. The aforementioned cater for the mainstream horror fans, maybe Shudder exists best skulking in the shadows. Son is a typical Shudder production. Fairly low budget but not terminally so. Fairly weird but not in a way that is off putting. And fairly good, but not brilliant…
When David (Luke David Blumm) contracts a mysterious illness, his mother Laura (Andi Matichak) must escape her murky past in order to keep him safe. Unfortunately, keeping David safe does involve a spot of cannibalism, but that’s what mothers are for, right? Tracking their progress is smitten detective Paul (Emile Hirsch).
The main issue here is that Son can’t quite decide what it wants to be. Is it a gross out horror? A body horror? A psychological horror? A cult fable? In the end, it becomes an uneasy mismash of all of the above. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have memorable moments, and Blumm is suitably creepy as the afflicted child, but there is a creeping feeling that this is all stuff we have seen before in this genre.
That being said, Ivan Kavanagh’s film never outstays its welcome and the Irish writer-director provides some chilling visual moments, but Son is not the film that is going to push Shudder further towards the mainstream. But then, the more I write this, the more I’m grateful that there is a service out there providing a home for weird indie horror flicks like Son. Let’s see what they come up with next.