Jesse Dixon

Florian Seller’s ‘The Son’, the follow-up to his harrowing directorial debut ‘The Father’, is a tremendous disappointment. Considering the ability of the director, as we saw in his first film, this latest effort is pitiful. The good: - Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern both offer reasonably good performance. Neither were nominated, and neither deserved too, but they make their way through emotive scenes with conviction. - Hans Zimmer’s score is great, as always. - A stellar epilogue, possibly the greatest sequence of the film. It added a half star to my score, but it’s annoying that the 110 minutes before it wasn’t on the same level. Okay, now the bad: - Zen McGrath as Nicholas. I’m not going to be too hard on him as he is quite young. I think the issue is more with the script and it’s depiction of mental health. But there are times where he needed to step up in challenging scenes, and you can tell the older actors are trying to coach him through it, to minimal effect. - Vanessa Kirby and Anthony Hopkins are completely wasted, for differing annoyances. The scene with Hopkins is completely unnecessary and shoehorned in, the running time could have been used to deepen Kirby and McGrath’s tension-filled relationship instead. - The script is extremely basic. Unlike The Father, the plot twists are extremely predictable and the dialogue is shallow. - There were too many scenes that didn’t need to be there, which interrupted the pacing and made the film about 20 minutes too long. Hugh Jackman running. Hugh Jackman sitting in a coffee shop with his only reason being there to call his son. Hugh Jackman taking a shower with intense water pressure. Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern continuing to leave messages that begin with ‘Hi, it’s me’. It’s not like they’re going to know who that is straight away. - There’s nothing new here. It’s a bland drama that tries to touch on mental health and how parents don’t know what it’s like to be a kid these days. Which is infuriating, as the parents make irrational, stupid, dangerous decisions regarding their son that make it difficult to feel sorry for either of them. This concludes my review of this poor, poor film. Please avoid if you can. There’s nothing worth the price of admission. 36/100.