The Son

Name: The Son
Genre: Drama
Released: November 25, 2022
Duration: 123 min
Rating: 45
Cast: Akie Kotabe, Anthony Hopkins, Erick Hayden, Hugh Jackman, Hugh Quarshie

2022

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Mixed or average reviews based on 46 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 12 Ratings

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5.2

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5.2	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 12 Ratings

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The Son

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Movie Details & Credits

Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: November 25, 2022 | Not Rated

Starring: Akie Kotabe, Anthony Hopkins, Erick Hayden, Hugh Jackman, Hugh Quarshie, Isaura Barbé-Brown, Joakim Skarli, Julia Westcott-Hutton, Kenny-Lee Mbanefo, Laura Dern, Reza Diako, Vanessa Kirby, William Hope, Zen McGrath

Summary: Peter's (Hugh Jackman) hectic life with his infant and new partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby) is upended when his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) appears with their son Nicholas (Zen McGrath), who is now a teenager. The young man has been missing from school for months and is troubled, distant, and angry. Peter strives to take care of Nicholas as hePeter's (Hugh Jackman) hectic life with his infant and new partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby) is upended when his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) appears with their son Nicholas (Zen McGrath), who is now a teenager. The young man has been missing from school for months and is troubled, distant, and angry. Peter strives to take care of Nicholas as he would have liked his own father to have taken care of him while juggling work, his and Beth's new son, and the offer of his dream position in Washington. However, by reaching for the past to correct its mistakes, he loses sight of how to hold onto the Nicholas in the present.… Expand

Director: Florian Zeller

Genre(s): Drama

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 123 min

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Critic Reviews

Mark Kennedy

Nov 22, 2022

Writer-director Florian Zeller’s second installment in his trilogy examining mental health is an emotional wrecking ball almost exquisite in its destructive power. Read full review

John Bleasdale

Sep 7, 2022

The Son, though perhaps not as original and accomplished as The Father, is nevertheless an affecting, empathetic and intelligent drama. Read full review

Joshua Rothkopf

Nov 23, 2022

Unlike The Father, which expanded Zeller's stage source material with maze-like complexity, The Son pins us in for an endgame that you wish had more of a takeaway than a gut punch. Read full review

The Film Stage Luke Hicks

Sep 15, 2022

It’s hard to imagine mal intent from the mind behind The Father, a film laced with an intoxicating empathy, but it’s not hard to imagine a lesser work. If we’re giving Zeller benefit of the doubt, it just goes to show how difficult it is for a director to make back-to-back bangers. Read full review

Hannah Strong

Feb 17, 2023

Even the magnetic likes of Jackman, Dern and Kirby are wasted here, to the extent that by the time The Son reaches its miserable, cloying foregone conclusion, it’s a relief to be free of the uninspired direction and paint-by-numbers interrogation of a subject that deserves much more depth. Read full review

Peter Travers

Jan 20, 2023

Hugh Jackman acts his heart out as a parent unable to cope with his clinically depressed son, but even he can’t save this poor relation to The Father from descending into two hours of misery porn. Read full review

Trace Sauveur

Dec 19, 2022

There are no astute or emotionally resonating takeaways to be had about the pain of depression, just stock melodrama with a cautionary-tale climax that feels desperate to shock. Read full review

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User Reviews

alejandro970

Jun 2, 2023

One of the strengths of this drama is that it handles sensitive issues correctly, realistically; The Achilles heel is that the thread that connects with the viewer and makes them empathize with the characters fails, and that is why the climax lacked impact. Better luck next time?

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

JLuis_001

Feb 11, 2023

With The Son Florian Zeller tries again to build a sober work like he did with The Father, but unfortunately, despite the solid performances of his cast, especially Hugh Jackman, what he ends up with is an impressively ineffective movie.

It's not a sloppily crafted movie, except that it'sWith The Son Florian Zeller tries again to build a sober work like he did with The Father, but unfortunately, despite the solid performances of his cast, especially Hugh Jackman, what he ends up with is an impressively ineffective movie.

It's not a sloppily crafted movie, except that it's very poorly structured and hardly realistic. The treatment of depression is flawed and, above all, superfluous.

Regardless of the work of its actors. Mostly Jackman, I think The Son will resonate more with viewers who will identify with the issues than what the movie does about them, and when I as a viewer feel like I'm not even getting a good examination of the issue, let alone something that makes me respond emotionally, what's left about it doesn't resolve or save absolutely nothing.

This was a huge disappointment.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Mauro_Lanari

May 24, 2023

(Mauro Lanari)
Conclusive act of a theatrical trilogy of which the film adaptation of "La Mère" is still missing, it has a score of 4.8/10 on Rotten and of 4.5/10 on Metacritic. The mistakes made by Zeller to get such an amount of harsh criticism to his second direction of a feature length(Mauro Lanari)
Conclusive act of a theatrical trilogy of which the film adaptation of "La Mère" is still missing, it has a score of 4.8/10 on Rotten and of 4.5/10 on Metacritic. The mistakes made by Zeller to get such an amount of harsh criticism to his second direction of a feature length are not few.
1) He does not distinguish "attempted suicide" from "failed suicide": it is only the 1st to be a request for help and attention, while 17-year-old Nicholas performs the 2nd gesture. The psychiatrists who take care of him should know the difference and explain it to the parents to justify the high risk of recurrence, but they do not.
2) He does not distinguish between adolescent discomfort, trauma from parental divorce and existential crisis [in the scene set in Nicholas' room the portrait of Rimbaud is prominently displayed]. The so-called "homo pulsionalis" is not superimposable to the "homo existentialis", the 3 different diagnoses require equally specific therapies and antidepressants could even be harmful.
3) In 2000 the Nolan brothers adopted with "Memento" the subjective perspective of a neuropsychiatric case by inventing the trick of a new chronological line to screen-write a noir work. I find the idea more fascinating when it is not limited to the renewal of a film genre but allows me to experience reality from points of view directly inaccessible to me. With "The Father" (2020) Zeller behaved like the Nolans, but what would be the peculiar POV of an aspiring suicidal? The ordinariness of the script of "The Son" makes it an ambiguous and in any case too schematic melodrama of a dysfunctional family.
4) This type of dramas continues to be sweetened by setting them, from "Amour" (Haneke 2012) onwards, in exaggeratedly high-ranking contexts among wealthy successful and prestigious characters: the nursing home where Hopkins was hosted in the previous film, in Italy it would cost around 3,000 euros a month, not to mention the United States. Furthermore, you never see adult diapers, walkers, bedpans, bed rails for the disabled, faecal and urinary incontinences: at movie festivals do they have a different organism from that of ordinary mortals?
5) Thanks, but the slow motion... not.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

bertobellamy

May 24, 2023

Monumental misfire. Can't believe this was made by the same guy as 'The Father.' Hugh Jackman, Vanessa Kirby, and Laura Dern do their best, but the screenplay is terrible. And Zen McgGrath's character probably it's the worst written ever. And, honestly, the guy can't act.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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