The Son is an ugly, blaring question mark of a film, and inexplicably terrible considering the talent involved. Decades of research and armies of scientists might need to be deployed to figure out what happened here. It’s adapted from the second entry in a “spiritual trilogy” of plays by author and playwright Florian Zeller, alongside The Father and The Mother, each dealing with families assailed by disorders and illnesses. Two years ago, Zeller adapted The Father into a film – it proved to be a delicate and deceptively simple portrait of dementia that featured some of Anthony Hopkins’s finest work as an actor, and won him an Oscar. History will not repeat itself with this one.
The film deals with Nicholas (Zen McGrath), the depressed teenage son of wealthy and divorced parents, Peter (Hugh Jackman) and Kate (Laura Dern). He’s been profoundly unsettled by their separation, and hasn’t been to school in a month. Peter left Kate to marry the younger Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and the couple now have an infant son. Nicholas asks to move in with them. What at first seems like a positive step soon crumbles into his further self-destruction. The adults notice the scars on his arms. He conceals more and more from them. They then spend the rest of the film demanding that Nicholas explain what’s wrong with him, all while he displays the most overt symptoms of a major depressive disorder.
