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Son(2021)
RLJE Films Mar 5, 2021 | Limited
When a young boy contracts a mysterious illness, his mother must decide how far she will go to protect him from terrifying forces in her past.
Releases
Original Release | Mar 5, 2021
Box Office
Results
$11,523
$55,068
$40,267
$95,335
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Other Details
Country of Origin: Ireland
Summaries
Plot Summary
- A car is being driven by somebody and it is night time and raining outside. In an restaurant a woman (Laura) is seated having a coffee and two men enters the café and sits in the next table looking at her. She gets up abruptly and leaves in a hurry. (She's pregnant) and the two men follows her. Next we see her driving the car and on the way gives birth to a child while saying, "I don't want you, I don't want you".Laura and now-8-year-old David are living a low-key, ordinary and most importantly, happy life. Her neighbor Susan helps them out by keeping David with her while Laura is attending to other matters. But all that changes one night when Laura hears noises coming from David's room and sees a bunch of people standing around his bed. She runs outside screaming for help and bangs on the door of Susan's and ask her to call the police. When she returns home, all the people have vanished from David's room, but David is left in the bed sideways with his shirt off his body.By the time the local cops show up, Detectives Paul (Emile Hirsch) and Steve (Cranston Johnson) cannot find any signs of a break-in. Steve thinks Laura imagined it, chalking it up to sleepwalking or lucid dreaming - but Laura's insistent that there were people in the house trying to kidnap David. Paul's more sympathetic and says they'll look into it. After they leave, she checks David for marks and bruises. She can't find anything and when he wakes up, David says he doesn't remember what happened, except that he was dreaming of drowning in a river of blood.One night, Laura calls Paul to her house when she hears noises outside, but again Paul finds nothing. David gets suddenly, unexplainably sick, puking blood and admitted to hospital. The doctors run every possible test, but can't find anything. They only know he's getting worse by the minute and probably won't make it through the night. Laura suggests that the people she saw in David's room poisoned him, but the doctors say they have tested for poison too and results were negative. Laura keeps the vigil with David and says her heartbreaking goodbyes - but by the next morning, he's made a mysteriously complete recovery.It's not long before David's sickness returns, though. Laura brings him back to the hospital. While there, she reveals to Paul that she was raised in a cult but she escaped 8 years ago and probably it's them who had visited David that day. Later that night, near David's hospital bed, Laura overhears voices outside the room and sees the doctors saying things like, "The boy is the priority," and "Wait until she's asleep." Laura looks out the window and sees some shady-looking men getting out of a car, and that's all the motivation she needs to take David and leave. She takes him to the neighbor's while she runs across the street to pack their stuff.Paul calls Laura while she's packing her bags and she asks him to meet her outside the school where she teaches and says not to trust anybody hinting everyone is in on the conspiracy to kidnap David. But when she goes back across the street, she finds her neighbor Susan (Erin Bradley Dangar) dead on the floor - and David making a meal of her major organs, saying he feels better. In a panic, Laura paints "He Is Coming" on the wall in Susan's blood - a mantra used by the cult - and leaves town with David, chucking her phone out the window when Paul calls again.She drives to a motel and sleeps while David watches cartoons, giggling like the kid he is. But in the morning, Laura wakes to see she and David are on the news. She switches cars and takes off again, telling David she needs to find an old friend who can help her remember what she's forgotten. Meanwhile, Paul and Steve are at the morgue with the dead neighbor. Steve shows Paul a bunch of old newspaper articles about Laura - whose name used to be Anna - and the pedophile ring she was a victim of. Steve believes Laura killed the neighbor and the whole cult idea is a fantasy used to cover up the severe trauma she suffered.While Laura seeks out a drug addict named Jimmy (Blaine Maye), who grew up in the cult with her, Paul does some investigating on his own and finds the shrink who treated Laura/Anna. She'd been institutionalized after her father was arrested for running the pedophile ring. He says Anna's father used to pimp her out along with Jimmy and confirms that the whole cult idea was a story she constructed in her head.But Jimmy tells a different story. He tells Laura/Anna that the cult used to have ceremonies where they killed animals. Then her father would have her recite this special chant that only she could do - a chant that would summon a demon who would then rape her. Laura doesn't want to believe that, saying it was her father who raped her - but Jimmy insists it was a demon. Then David gets sick again, and Laura takes him to another motel. But things are even worse this time as David becomes increasingly hostile toward her, screaming and ranting in dirty language asking for "food".Unable to handle it, Laura runs out to her car and screams her frustration, not knowing what to do. Then she sees the pimp rooming next door beating one of her girls and invites him to her room, and David takes it from there - making a vicious, bloody meal out of the guy. Laura cleans up the mess afterward as David watches cartoons, all better now and happy.Then, they drive to a church where Laura dumps what's left of the pimp and paints another "He Is Coming" message. Meanwhile, Paul and Steve show up at Jimmy's house only to find him dead, too, with a bunch of crosses sticking out of his mouth and "He Is Coming" cut into his chest.At another motel, David and Laura have this wonderful bonding moment. David says he was dreaming that he was flying and could see her. Then he says the world was in his hands and it cracked in half - there was fire, and everyone was screaming but that he was okay like he was a superhero. "Nothing could touch me," he says. Laura says his sickness is getting worse and more frequent. She says she'll stay with him, but she won't let him kill anyone else.At the pimp crime scene, Steve says it's time to drop the net on Laura, but Paul says they need to go easy on her. David soon gets sick again and when a bunch of guys bust into their darkened room, Laura uses the gun she stole from the pimp and unloads.But when she turns the lights on, it's Steve and two other local cops that she's killed. Later, after she's put some distance between them, Laura calls Paul, who's at the morgue with Steve's body. She says she didn't mean to kill him, and he begs her to turn herself in. But she tells him she's going back where it all started - meaning the house where she lived with her father.When they get to the abandoned house, the banner (from her memory) still flaps in the wind - but instead of "He Is Coming," it says "Happy Birthday," leading us to think Laura might be delusional after all. And when she goes up to the bedroom, it looks the same from her memories - except that there are no cult sigils. Then she goes back out to the car and brings sickly David in, saying that no matter what happens, she loves him and will always take care of him.Laura carries him up to the bedroom and then recites the chant, which she remembers perfectly. She demands that the demon cure David - who she now believes is their son. Laura says she'll kill David if it doesn't. She repeats the chant several more times and an ugly, horned figure rises up behind them, moving slowly toward them.Then, the room shakes and dark smoke billows out of the doorway - but just as the demon touches her, Paul busts in with a bunch of cops. Laura tells him she conjured the demon but that they scared him off. She says the cult fed David flesh to awaken the monster in him, but Paul says she imagined the whole thing. He says he can help her, but she says she can't let David live like this. She loves him too much. And Paul shoots her before she can bring the knife down.Later, in the hospital, Paul sits with David and tells him he'll protect him and make him better. He waits for the nurse to get called away and then cuts off a slice of his arm to feed David. So apparently, Laura was right all along - the cult is very real, and Paul is a part of it. Paul says that no one can know who David really is - and it turns out that Paul killed Jimmy to silence him. Paul tells David he'll never be alone again and that his father's there for him now. And then David rises out of bed and hugs the horned beast, calling it "Daddy" and resting his head on its shoulder. (thanks to geekgirlauthority)
Storyline
- Having escaped from a cult as a child, a mother must face her past when its sinister members break into her home and attempt to steal her eight year old son, David. Now the two are on the run pursued by a detective determined to save them both. Since his aborted kidnapping something has changed in David and the boy has succumbed to a mysterious illness. Following her maternal instincts to save him, his mother commits unspeakable acts to keep him alive but is losing the battle. Soon, she has to decide how far she is willing to go to save her son. — yusufpiskin
