Like Father Like Son, 2025.
Written and Directed by Barry Jay.
Starring Dylan Flashner, Ariel Winter, Vivica A. Fox, Mayim Bialik, Dermot Mulroney, Jim Klock, Prima Apollinaare, Eric Michael Cole, Benjamin Mackey, Casey James, Daniel Lench, John C. Epperson, Michael Roddy, Laura L. Cottrel, Ronit Gilbert-Aranoff, Chris Gann, Jonathan Tysor, Pappy Faulkner, Jonathan Shores, Mike Capozzi, Tim Sitarz, Tamika Katon-Donegal, and Coel Mahal.
SYNOPSIS:
Eli’s father awaits execution for murder. As Eli experiences violent tendencies himself, he takes drastic steps to break the family’s cycle of brutality.
No tragedy or traumatic incident is left unturned for exploitation in writer/director Barry Jay’s relentlessly unpleasant, embarrassingly constructed Like Father Like Son. It aims to examine a hereditary cycle of self-righteous murderous violence passed down from father to son, but does so in an absurd fashion from the beginning, becoming increasingly more insane every five minutes while seemingly determined to introduce a new horror, whether it be domestic violence, stories of sexual assault (with a dash of incest against a minor), neo-Nazi reveals, and an overprotective boyfriend who not only kills anyone that gets creepy with his girlfriend. He also has the miraculous ability to do so without any planning and in public without ever getting caught. Also, the relationship in question is not played as a dangerous slippery slope, cautioning against such wanton, overprotective violence. What’s concerning is that this is mostly romanticized without a shred of characterization or convincing darkness.
Eli (Dylan Flashner) is traumatized from witnessing his father, Gabe (Dermot Mulroney), kill a teenager in broad daylight, feeling justified because the boy was unleashing a barrage of homophobic slurs against a much younger kid trying to enjoy a comic book. Horrified, Eli turns his father in. Despite this coming as a complete surprise, Gabe has apparently always had a violent side and may have killed others. Regardless of the facts, Eli is traumatized and trying to move on every day while working a thankless job selling life insurance with a class boss pushing for him to drop his morals and shame customers into making a purchase.
One night, Eli meets and takes home Hayley (Ariel Winter) for a one-night stand. When it’s time for her to leave, he shows unsettling shades of his father, getting aggressive, assuming that she only slept with him to steal his wallet afterward. Hayley is understandably terrified and wants nothing to do with Eli after this. This is also a movie that makes zero sense, as her tune changes, and she becomes infatuated with Eli after he prevents her from getting sexually assaulted by murdering her abuser in an alley while offering sex work, as she also has financial problems and no home. Eli is also struggling to pay rent.
Nevertheless, she comes home, and they start sleeping together, with her now having the hots for his sociopathic side. To be clear, this isn’t twisted eroticism with complex characters, either. It’s a wholesome romance where Hayley knows Eli is in the wrong and genuinely feels safe around him even though he got uncomfortably physical with her a couple of nights ago. My head hurts talking about this garbage.
This is roughly the first 20 minutes of the film. It can’t be overstated that this is just the beginning of the pedal-to-the-metal shock value on display here, which frequently isn’t shocking given how amateurish and sloppily cut together the film is. Part of the reason some of this repulsive material doesn’t necessarily disgust outright could also be attributed to the dreadful performances that leave no room for one to be invested. Even when a child is threatened with a knife later on in the film, it’s less offensive and upsetting and more comical in an “of course, this tacky trash is going there next” way.
Sometimes, one wonders if Barry Jay was trying to make a twisted, dark comedy that rocketed away from him, but the ending credits’ messages about early signs of sociopathy and violence affirm that he is under the impression that this is serious art. I would call it misery porn, but nothing about the film is adequate to make this miserable from a material standpoint. It’s only miserable in the sense that 88 minutes of watching a blank-slate protagonist kill people over and over with no consequences or much conflict somehow feels like it’s 148 minutes. There is not a single redeemable quality to Like Father Like Son.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd
