Writer/Director Ivan Kavanagh’s horror follow-up to 2014’s The Canal instantly goes for the jugular with a propulsive opening that finds a very pregnant Laura (Andi Matichak) on the run from a cult. Son opens with a POV shot of her car, darting down a dark highway while the sounds of sermons, full of bombast and brimstone prophesies, drowns out everything else. After a brief stop in a roadside diner, the camera picking up her plain, religious attire and her mud-encrusted bare feet, she’s back on the road when two ominous men enter the diner. Eventually, she apparently loses them and is forced to pull to the side of the road to give birth to her child.

“I don’t want you! I don’t want you!” she inconsequentially yells in pain. But it doesn’t matter. The baby’s coming, whether she likes it or not.

Fast forward eight years and Laura’s managed to create a new life for herself and her son David (Luke David Blumm), a precocious and smiling child who asks his mother questions like if she had eight arms, would she hide them or use them? A single mother, Laura relies on the help of her kind neighbor Susan (Erin Bradley Dangar) to watch David after school while she takes classes on Childhood PTSD. They have a peaceful and loving small family...which never lasts in a horror movie and one night, Laura walks into her son’s room to find it full of people who stare at her with malice before the door slams and locks in her face.

Desperate, she rushes to call the police before discovering David back in his bed, missing his pajamas but otherwise seemingly safe. Two cops, including Emile Hirsch’s Paul, show up to ask questions because they find no signs of forced entry or any evidence, for that matter. While Officer Steve (Cranston Johnson) is dubious and begins peppering her with invasive questions, Paul believes her. And before we can wonder who the people were, David falls into an epipleptic state that reduces him to a coma and the doctor’s rush to figure out what’s wrong. Paranoia soon sets in as Laura believes the cult might be back and in league with the doctors.

Then David acquires a taste for human flesh…

What follows is a race against time, in some ways, as Laura goes on the run with David with both the police and the cult hot on her heels. It’s a dynamic first act that mixes a sense of dizzying paranoia punctuated with gore as David randomly, for example, vomits blood. Cinematographer Piers McGrail frames the action as a mix of no-nonsense shots mixed with energetic sequences of escape. The sound design, meanwhile, is crunchy and accentuates the action and gore with juicy aplomb. A couple times throughout the film, David lies in bed unconscious as his mouth and jaw make these creaking, crackling noises as his jaw opens and uncontrollably reacts to flesh.

When Son works, it works incredibly well. Bolstered by Andi Matichak’s powerful performance and a script that really feeds into a parent’s love for their kids, the central conflict is tense and well-constructed. Watching Laura’s downward spiral of desperation mixed with a desire to protect her child is genuinely enthralling and Kavanagh peppers his story with frequent bursts of gore that establish the stakes. Haunting is the word that comes immediately to mind, particularly as the film focuses more on rural decline and long stretches of abandoned highways. Set in the Midwest, Son is filled with scenes of quiet desperation, such as Laura’s childhood friend Jimmy (Blaine Maye), who has a different recollection of their early life.

Too much of Son tries to color our perspective of Laura and her mental state, which is unfortunate because it’s obvious from the opening scenes that something supernaturally nefarious is going on. It also doesn’t help that the film feels, in some ways, like a more grounded and dark Eli, replacing that film’s camp sensibilities with drugs and familial trauma. The narrative becomes slightly predictable, to the point I knew where it was going the moment characters are introduced. But if that element of surprise is missing, making certain reveals feel rote, the apocalyptic atmosphere, splashes of practical gore effects and Laura’s quiet desperation make Son a recommendation.