60 Nights of Horror #23: Son

I think maybe instead of calling this theme Bad Ass Kids, I should have gone with Fuck Them Kids. Or Moms Cleaning Up After Kids, or We Are Not Getting Our Deposit Back and It’s All On Account of These Goddamn Kids!

Son opens up with Laurie Strode’s granddaughter from the new Halloween series, in active labor, sitting with her back to the door and that’s her FIRST mistake. I’m not going to blame her for anything that happened before this because she’s clearly a child and clearly escaping from some folks who want her back, let’s say it’s a cult. It’s a cult. They probably didn’t teach her that if you’re on high alert, taking your eyes off of the potential entries and exits is a BAD idea.

So when big dudes come in, obviously here to carry her back kicking and screaming, and she escapes more easily than I thought she would, I’m like “Whale whale, color me impressed.”

Slightly more open about her feelings than Eva in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Anna actively yells “I don’t want you! I don’t want you!” to the helpless little worm making a very bloody (not bloody enough if I’m being picky) evacuation from her Netherlands all over the bench seat of this stolen car. But radically unlike Eva in We Need to Talk About Kevin, the second she picks up the squealing six month old child actor, she’s like nothing bad will ever happen to my perfect baby angel.

Eight years later

Anna, now called Laura, good for her, lives in a massive fucking house with her sweet little boy David. Across the street in an equally massive house, is a seemingly single woman called Susan. What do these women do for a living? I don’t see any husbands! Did y’all marry some sugar daddies and then kill them? Are you high powered attorneys? Doctors? Why do y’all live in these massive fancy houses, Susan of no profession?? Do you have wealthy parents? I know Anna/Laura doesn’t. She started from the bottom when she put herself in witness protection.

Laura’s a teacher?? Where?! Connecticut?! where do they pay teachers enough to own a house that big? maybe she’s renting.

Or MAYBE she’s subletting it to the 8 cultists that she doesn’t know are in her house til she wakes up one unassuming night to find them diddling her kid. At which point she does what any sensible and protective parent would do: run across the street and ask the NEIGHBOR to call the police. (Really??)

She HAS a smart phone! How did she get it? How did she get a new identity after washing up somewhere, baby in tow, with no ID and no birth certificate, etc, I want to see THAT movie. I want to see the immediate aftermath of this woman with a newborn baby still attached to the afterbirth, walking into a hospital and being turned away for having no insurance, pushing out the placenta onto the ER floor in indignation. How did she get an education, how did she get a job, and most importantly, because it comes up later that she OWNS it and is thinking of SELLING it…..

How did she get this hoooooouuuuse?!

I promise I’m asking the real questions, unlike our detective here, Emile Hirsch doing his back Jack Black in a serious role, who takes more interest in Laura personally than in any detective work. Like, dude. Some professionalism here would be welcome, like why are you going with her to the hospital? Do you not have paperwork you could be doing? These reports need to be filed! Listen to your partner, Laura’s probably crazy, she got all that house on teacher money, something ain’t right.

Meanwhile we’ve got a kid that won’t stop puking blood and getting his flesh eating bacteria all over everything. Like, this little shit needs to be quarantined and he’s like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown, except instead of dirt it’s blood. He’s just a sweet little nugget surrounded by a perpetual blood cloud.

He is coming…. but this pimp isn’t!

Laura’s on the run from the cultists trying to recapture her and her kid, hopping from motel to motel, each of which shows the same series of vintage cartoons at seemingly all hours of the day and night. Naturally we need a Little Shop-esque moment in which Laura knows that feeding her vampire (?) son a live human is wrong and she doesn’t want to do it, but he did just call her a bitch and she loves him so much, you know who else just got called a bitch? This sex worker suspected of stealing from her pimp, a fine as hell big broad gym rat king with a scar on his head and a core that can pull a truck. I suppose the world WOULD be better off without hot guys like him emasculating Emile Hirsch. What follows is pure comedy.

This movie is really bloody, for no good reason. And I love blood! Almost as much as little baby nugget! I feel like the lack of a plot or backstory concerning the cult that may or may not exist is supposed to be indicative of the holes in Laura’s memory, but I’d have loved to have known more about it and what they stand for. I would also have liked for David not to have lost his memory every single time he killed. Like, I think little dude should remember and be either horrified or increasingly sinister. It would have made a more cohesive movie than this.

And as lazy as this movie was, it was predictable too. From moment one when we meet Detective I-Have-A-Crush-On-Every-Suspect, I knew he was in the cult. Ain’t no reason a busy as fuck lawman makes time for trauma queen Jackson unless he’s trying to hit that (which he is) or in the cult trying to get close to her kid and gaslight her into doing something stupid enough to get her dispatched so he can be alone with the kid and summon the demon himself.

Can you tell what happened in this movie by what I’ve said?

I can’t and I watched the damn thing! Or I could give you full on play-by-play and I couldn’t tell you why you should give a shit about anything that happens.

I tried so hard to care about this movie, I really did, but all I really latched onto is poor Laurie Strode’s granddaughter, all of 24, with an 8 year old child and a MASSIVE FUCKING HOUSE THAT SHE’S THINKING OF SELLING.

Girl where did you get the money for this house?

Anyone who’s ever been through the bullshit of buying a house will understand my frustration with this film.