Raindance Film Festival review – Child (2026)
With their young son in critical condition, Anne (Brigitte Urhausen) and Greg (Mailk Zidi) take a drive East from civilised Luxemburg to one of those unnamed countries which were fashionable in Hostel-style horror films twenty or so years ago … determined Anne didn’t want the panicky Greg, whom she blames for the boy’s accident, to come along but he’s threatened to tell the police if she doesn’t let him in on whatever deal she’s doing to secure a transplant organ the kid. At the end of the Sat-Nav instructions isn’t a clinic but a spot by disused railway tracks from which it’s a short hike to a cave where a tent is set up to perform fast vivisections on donors the couple don’t want to know about. Into this set-up comes Lydia (Lydia Indjova), another determined mother – who has a gun and wants to find her missing daughter.
Directed by Cyrus Neshvad, who also co-wrote with Guillaume Levil, Child looks at a subject which had its vogue in torture porn days – if it wasn’t rich sickos maiming for kicks it was organ harvesters – from a fresh angle. It flees the grimy nightmare of its medical business for an abandoned, trap-filled old dark house in the woods – a nice touch is Anne saying how much their son would love the place – where an even bigger menace lurks. It ratchets up the suspense as two desperate mothers are stuck in the woods, with possible monsters in pursuit, and a beeping, lit-up organ transplant container signals their whereabouts and the very brief window before the contents are useless. It’s not long but is suspenseful and when Indjova holds the screen it becomes a little deeper – though it still falls into the category of likely story.
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