Son of Sara opens with a compelling premise. Sara (Chloe Van Landschoot) is heavily pregnant after a one-night stand and living with her supportive partner, Carol (Tymika Tafari), but increasingly disturbing symptoms – an insatiable appetite for raw meat, violent bouts of sickness and terrifying visions – suggest something far more sinister than a difficult pregnancy. When the baby’s estranged father, Troy (Garrett Hnatiuk), suddenly reappears and invites Sara to his isolated family farmhouse, every instinct tells both Carol and the audience to stay away. Naturally, Sara doesn’t listen.
Writer-director Houston Bone leans into familiar occult pregnancy territory, flirting with DNA from Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen and Hereditary. The opening hour moves through predictable genre beats, with Sara repeatedly ignoring increasingly alarming warning signs to a questionable extent. Her decision-making often undermines the empathy the film is asking us to feel, leaving Carol as the emotional anchor despite receiving considerably less screen time.
Thankfully, Tafari gives the film exactly that grounding. As Carol, she’s compassionate without feeling saintly, and her growing desperation to protect both Sara and the unborn child provides some of the story’s strongest emotional weight. It’s telling that the film is often at its most engaging whenever Carol takes centre stage, her practical instincts standing in stark contrast to Sara’s increasingly baffling choices; though this is never a slight on Van Landschoot, who is phenomenal in her full-bodied commitment to Sara.
Jane Moffat, meanwhile, relishes every second as Troy’s unsettling mother Agnes. Equal parts overbearing parent and satanic matriarch, she injects genuine menace and dark humour into every scene she’s in. Bone could arguably have mined even more from her character, particularly the possibility that Agnes may be something more psychologically complex than simply another horror movie cult leader, but Moffat remains one of the film’s undeniable highlights.
Where Son of Sara finally comes alive is its final act. Once the film fully embraces its body horror ambitions, Bone delivers several memorably grotesque practical effects that reward the patience required to get there. The birth sequence descends into gleefully unhinged territory, combining occult horror, visceral creature effects and themes of bodily autonomy into something far more distinctive than what precedes it. While none of its individual ideas are entirely new, the way they’re assembled results in a finale that’s messy, shocking and unexpectedly entertaining.
There’s no shortage of ambition behind Son of Sara, and Bone clearly has an eye for memorable horror imagery. The problem is that the film spends too long recycling familiar ideas before revealing the far stranger movie hiding underneath. Had it reached its wonderfully bonkers destination sooner – and invested more in developing its characters along the way – this could have been a genuinely memorable addition to the pregnancy horror subgenre.
As it stands, Son of Sara is an uneven but worthwhile watch, elevated by committed performances, impressive practical effects and a wildly entertaining final act that almost makes up for the familiar road taken to get there.
THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Son of Sara is now available on Digital and On Demand in the United States.
