Son of Sara is directed by Houston Bone and the cast includes Chloe Van Landschoot. Tymika Tafari. Garret Hnatiuk and Jane Moffat.
TL;DR: Son of Sara is a strange little Satanic pregnancy horror movie that starts brilliantly, gets bogged down in familiar territory, then goes completely off the rails in its final act.
Plot
Haunted by strange urges and visions, a pregnant woman named Sara accepts an invitation to dinner that spirals into a bloody, demented nightmare.
Son of Sara Is Best When It Gets Uncomfortable
I liked Son of Sara a lot more when it was being weird about pregnancy than when it was being a standard Satanic horror movie, which sounds like a strange distinction, but it really is the difference between the film's best moments and its more ordinary ones.
Houston Bone also has a much better handle on Sara's physical experience than he does on some of the familiar horror material surrounding her - the pregnancy feels unpleasant, exhausting and intrusive, and Chloe Van Landschoot completely commits to that, and frankly, she looks absolutely wrecked.
The raw-meat scenes are particularly disgusting, and Van Landschoot sells them so well, and there is something wonderfully unpleasant about watching her enjoy something that she absolutely should not be eating.
Her performance also isn't polished in that boring way, where every emotion arrives at exactly the right moment, because Sara feels physically overwhelmed, confused and sometimes almost childlike, and Van Landschoot lets all of that come through, where you can actually feel Sara's discomfort while watching her.
There are also some wonderfully strange physical choices in the performance - Sara's movements, facial expressions and reactions can be slightly off, and that makes her increasingly difficult to read, because sometimes she looks terrified, sometimes fascinated, sometimes almost delighted by things that should horrify her.
I thought it was a hell of a performance for an indie horror movie where people spend quite a lot of time being sick, eating things they shouldn't and looking increasingly unwell.
Tymika Tafari Gives the Movie Its Heart
Tymika Tafari is just as important, although in a completely different way - Carol is the person who makes the relationship at the center of Son of Sara slightly believable, where there is genuine affection between her and Sara, and I bought them as a couple.
I also liked that Carol isn't written as a saint, as yes, she's supportive, but she has limits, and watching those limits get pushed gives some of the quieter scenes more weight, and the movie is much more emotionally effective when it stays with Sara and Carol than when it starts explaining the bigger Satanic nonsense.
Jane Moffat is also good, where Agnes could have been a very familiar horror character, because, let's face it, creepy mother in an isolated house is hardly unexplored territory, but Moffat gets around that by making her wonderfully unpleasant.
She has the sort of face that makes a perfectly normal conversation feel like a threat, and there is also a bit of dark humor in the way she plays Agnes, which I appreciated because Son of Sara is more fun when it remembers that horror can be ridiculous.
I actually wish the character had been given more to do though, as there are hints that Agnes could have been more interesting than the usual Satanic mother figure, but the movie doesn't really dig into that.
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The Middle Sections Are a Mess
Despite some promising aspects to Son of Sara, once the movie settles into its Satanic horror setup, a lot of the material becomes much easier to predict, and the film knows exactly which horror movies it is borrowing from too, and Rosemary's Baby is the obvious comparison, but the problem isn't that these ideas have been used before, as pretty much everything in horror has been used before, the problem is that Son of Sara doesn't always add enough to them.
You will see where the movie's next move coming from several minutes away, and some of the creepy discoveries feel like they have been placed there because the genre says they should be there, rather than because they are especially interesting, and some of Sara's decisions also started to irritate me.
I understand that horror movies require characters to make questionable choices, because if everyone immediately called the police, locked the doors and went home, we'd have very short movies, but there are moments here where Sara ignores so many warning signs that I started getting annoyed with her.
The Movie Gets Much Better When It Gets Bloody
Fortunately, Son of Sara saves some of its best material for the end, as once the film gets to the birth sequence, Bone finally lets the movie become as strange as it has been threatening to be - this is where the practical effects also really pay off, and the horror gets bloody, physical and properly disgusting, and I was much more engaged with the movie at this point.
The creature effects also work better for me because they feel tangible, as there is actual stuff happening in front of the camera rather than the movie relying entirely on quick cuts and digital effects to create the horror.
It is also where the film's sense of humor works best, because some of the imagery is so excessive that laughing becomes part of the experience, and I mean that as a compliment.
Son of Sara clearly isn't an expensive production, and some moments are rough around the edges,and my feelings about Son of Sara were all over the place, - the opening was decent, the middle made me impatient, and then the final act pulled me back in.
That unevenness is frustrating, because there is a genuinely good horror movie buried inside Son of Sara, I just don't think the whole thing reaches the level of its strongest scenes.
Final Thoughts
Son of Sara isn't perfect, but it has good performances, some genuinely disgusting moments and a final act that finally gives the movie the personality it needed.