The Son

Zeller's too smart to make a truly "bad" movie, and there are some interesting ideas here... But the messaging is so blunt, and the narrative descent so predictable, it leaves little room for actual emotional engagement.

A badly misjudged melodrama, this domestic tale is bogged down in heavy handed histrionics and sentimental notes that makes you want to run away.

There are no ill intentions behind The Son, but sometimes stories are so badly judged and naive in their execution that they turn ugly.

Nicholas’s pain should overwhelm us. It doesn’t, because it’s not allowed to.

Jackman resumes conveying psychic trauma with the air of someone thinking he might have lost his car keys. But it’s the film that has the character flaw no actor could redeem.

Everything is a little too self-conscious, but the longer the film goes on — and it does rather go on — the more it seems this artifice might be a deliberate choice, to make the entire world as dishonest and uncomfortable as Nicholas sees it.

It is not an easy film to watch, ...but if the viewer is a parent, the emotional impact will be tripled. However, despite the harshness of the subject matter, it is important and necessary for cinema to address it with the public.[Full review in Spanish]

This is a film that is never as harrowing or moving as it should be.

Florian Zeller’s second feature lacks the psychological depth that its predecessor wholeheartedly possesses

“The Son” is an awful movie. One of the year’s worst. Rarely has a film missed the mark of its thematic or filmmaking potential so spectacularly.