What’s the worst nightmare for any parent? Re-runs of ‘Jim’ll fix it’? Gary Glitter misunderstanding the Make-a-Wish foundation? Perhaps for David and Victoria Beckham it’s that Brooklyn insists on keeping the family surname. But for Greg (Malik Zidi) and Anne (Brigitte Urhausen) it’s the near fatal accident of their son that sees him hospitalized in a coma in desperate need of an organ transplant. Blaming Greg for the accident Anne manages to secure what her child needs and goes off to collect the organ with her husband insistent that he comes along too, much to her reluctance.
He soon finds that there’s a reason for this when they get to the destination of the clinic. Perhaps clinic is too grand a description because what it actually is, is a tent set up in cave where organ harvesters perform swift operations like some medical version of a back street garage. Wilfully in denial about the ethics of all this they are given the required organ in a handheld sealed unit with a countdown light that any delay will render the organ unfit for purpose and presumably why Deliveroo will never get the contract. The race to get back to the hospital is on.
Except the mother of the donor child turns up at the cave armed and wanting to know what has happened to her own child and pursues Greg and Anne through the forest to that horror staple, the abandoned old dark house that’s filled with traps and more.
Directed and co-written by Cyrus Neshvad, ‘Child’ is a spin on the torture porn of the Hostel films and here its story moves from moral dilemma to thriller and finally horror. Running at a brief 78 minutes it gets right on with the job as it piles on the suspense. Shortlisted as Luxembourg’s submission for the 2027 Oscars Best International Feature Film it’s well worth a look.
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Director Cyrus Neshvad takes us behind the scenes….
Here’s the trailer….
