Son of Sara: The End of “Elevated Horror”

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past ten years, the resurgence of horror in the late 2010s has snowballed for nearly a decade. Debates on when the “elevated horror” phenomenon originated range from Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook to Ari Aster’s Hereditary—the classic “chicken or egg” conundrum. 2000s franchises like ‘Saw’ and ‘Hostel’ reduced horror to shock-oriented “torture porn,” souring horror’s reputation amongst contemporary moviegoers. The great irony about “elevated horror,” however, is that it’s exactly what horror used to be: thematically interesting. Conversely, though, is how these films “borrow” from each other—including Houston Bone’s Son of Sara. A blend of Rosemary’s Baby and Get Out, the film simply refuses to bring anything new to the table.

With the “elevated horror” malarkey reaching its logical conclusion, one can see how nakedly Son of Sara cribs from its contemporary influences. It’s not the first 2020s horror movie to riff on either Get Out (Opus, HIM, The Menu) or Rosemary’s Baby (The First Omen and Immaculate released two weeks apart in 2024), and I’m, for lack of better phrase, so goddamn tired. As a horror fanatic, I bend over backwards to argue in the genre’s favor, though the swath of these brazenly generic follies does anything but help horror’s case. Trauma, grief, Antichrist babies, secluded areas populated by strange people who might be in a cult; such is the modus operandi of elevated horror’s copy-paste-style assembly line.

That’s not to say Son of Sara doesn’t have merit—it’s just a shame that such themes are buried under overutilized frameworks. Bar the Get out and Rosemary’s Baby-isms, there’s a truly strong thread regarding heteronormative social structures and their demand to control queer bodies. Channeled through the titular Sara (Van Landschoot) and her girlfriend, Carol (Tafari), two expecting lesbian parents, Son of Sara’s angle on queerness might be its best trait. Director Houston Bone is no stranger to queer themes and imagery, having helmed the web series Teenagers, alongside his debut,  I Don’t Know Who You Are, two grounded dramas about the LGBTQ+ experience. Bone flexed his chops as a dramatist, but horror is a different beast entirely.

On that note, Bone plays his hand far too early. Son of Sara opens with a scene that is quite mean-spirited and graphic, though it basically spells out the Rosemary’s Baby-isms off-rip. Perhaps it’s a cold open for a potential Netflix acquisition, in hopes of retaining viewer attention; either way, audiences know exactly where things are going from here. To quote Dr. Frank N Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, we’re supposed to “shiver with antici…pation!”, which doesn’t happen if you’re given a mental roadmap of how the rest of the movie unfolds. It’s hard to pin all of this on the opening scene, because it  is not like anything is done to subvert our expectations, either.

Like the deluge of many lesser Get Out-inspired horror films before it, Son of Sara shifts gears when Sara runs into Troy (Hnatiuk), the father of her child. Awkward reunions set the stage for Sara’s invitation to Troy’s faraway farmhouse, where his traditionalist (potentially Satanist) mother awaits. Where I roll my eyes is that before this point, Son of Sara mostly works as a more intimate piece about the isolating, real-life body horror of pregnancy. Instead, it takes a hard turn into the same Rosemary’s Baby-esque fare that has been (like the ending of Immaculate) beaten to death by this point. While there are truly great ideas hidden within Son of Sara, they’re covered in hackneyed clichés.

Smarter films (Julia Ducorneau’s Titane, for instance) take a more thoughtful approach to subject matter so sensitive, but maybe that’s the real subversion all along; maybe it’s on me for not reading the logline first. I’m not sure how many different ways I can describe how flavorless and run-of-the-mill Son of Sara is, but, hey, at least the gore is well done. The only thing worse than a voiceless film is a muzzled one, and you can hear the voice trying to eke through the noise of overly familiar material. Horror is one of the few genres that relies on familiarity, and (like the recent Evil Dead Burn), finds itself in so many contemporary screenwriting pitfalls.

As someone who derives no pleasure from dunking on my fellow Canucks, and as someone who likes horror movies, what are we doing here? Has Houston Bone seen a horror film released after 1967? These are the questions I find myself asking instead, as Son of Sara’s narrative is so blatantly obvious that any questions are answered by other horror films (fun drinking game: take a shot for every time I’ve mentioned either Rosemary’s Baby or Get Out). Between films like Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, Blue Heron, and Mile End Kicks, Canadian cinema has been on a hell of a run this year—making Son of Sara’s underwhelm all the more stark in comparison.

still courtesy of Vortex Media

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Luca Mehta