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Child begins with a question that sounds almost too easy: how far would you go to save your dying son? Most parents would answer without hesitation—any distance, any cost, any sacrifice. Writer-director Cyrus Neshvad understands that the real horror is hidden inside that answer. In his feature debut, the filmmaker behind the Oscar-nominated short The Red Suitcase takes an act of parental desperation and follows it across a moral boundary that cannot be uncrossed. What begins as an attempt to preserve one innocent life becomes a lean, increasingly nightmarish examination of guilt, grief and the terrible things love can persuade us to justify.

Anne and Greg are nearly out of time and entirely out of acceptable options. Their last hope requires them to participate in something monstrous, but Child is less interested in judging that first decision than in examining everything it unleashes. Each attempted escape creates another trap, every solution demands an uglier compromise, and the couple’s certainty that they are acting out of love becomes increasingly difficult to separate from selfishness. Neshvad keeps the film rooted in an emotional reality even as its journey grows stranger, allowing the horror to emerge from the characters’ choices instead of merely surrounding them.

At just 78 minutes, the film wastes little time and offers even less relief. Neshvad favors suggestion, confined spaces and the persistent feeling that something dreadful is waiting just beyond the frame. The violence matters, but anticipation and consequence do most of the damage. Malik Zidi and Brigitte Urhausen make Greg and Anne’s fear painfully credible, never reducing them to foolish horror-movie victims. Their decisions may become indefensible, but the performances ensure that the desperation behind those decisions remains understandable—and that is precisely what makes the film so uncomfortable.

There are moments when Child brushes against familiar territory. Contemporary horror has returned repeatedly to grief, damaged families and trauma made flesh, while the isolated setting and escalating pursuit carry echoes of other survival thrillers. What distinguishes Neshvad’s film is its refusal to treat guilt as a convenient metaphor that can be defeated once the monster has been identified. Here, guilt is cumulative. It travels with the characters, contaminates every choice and quietly alters the meaning of the love that started everything. The film’s occasional turns toward the fantastical may divide viewers, but they also prevent the story from settling into a predictable chase.

Child is a grim, compact and morally punishing debut from a filmmaker who knows that the most effective horror does not ask what we fear—it asks what we might become. Neshvad never offers an easy answer to the question at the film’s center because an easy answer would let us safely distance ourselves from Anne and Greg. Instead, he leaves us inside their nightmare, wondering whether love without limits is really love at all. Following its Discovery Award nomination at the 2026 Raindance Film Festival, Child arrives in UK cinemas on October 2, and its bleakest choices are likely to follow audiences home.

MPAA Rating: Unrated.
Runtime: 78 mins
Director: Cyrus Nechvad
Writer: Guillaume Levil
Cast: Malik Zidi; Brigitte Urhausen; Lydia Indjova
Genre: Mystery  |  Thriller
Tagline: How Far WOuld You Go to Save Your Child
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Synopsis: To save their dying son, a father follows his wife on a mysterious journey where instinct eclipses morality, and the promise of life reveals the monstrous edge of a parent's love.