Official synopsis
To save their dying son, a father follows his wife into a mysterious journey where the promise of life slowly reveals the monstrous depths of a parent’s love.
Review
Avoid spoilers, dear readers, and go into director Cyrus Neshvad’s chilling Child (Luxembourg, 2026) as cold as possible. This thriller with horror elements had me captivated the entire time, building from tense, dramatic suspense from the outset to a jaw-dropping third act full of unexpected shocks.
Anne (Brigitte Urhausen) and her physician husband Greg (Mailk Zidi) are a highly troubled couple whose young son is hours away from dying if he doesn’t get an organ transplant. Anne blames Greg for their son’s situation, making their drive from their home city in Luxembourg to a remote rural location in another country to pick up the needed organ a dreadful one.
Once they arrive at the destination, matters become ugly and dangerous right away. But this is only the first act, and the tension only rises from here. A box keeping the organ useful has an alarm light on it that keeps the apprehension going for multiple reasons.
Urhausen and Zidi are both excellent, and Lydia Indjova provides superb support as a mother who becomes involved in the main family’s life-and-death — for more reasons than one — predicaments.
Neshvad, who cowrote the screenplay with Guillaume Levil, paces the proceedings masterfully. The drama involving parents and children is strong and effective, and the genre-film elements are some of the emotionally gripping ones viewers are bound to see this year.
A strong candidate for my top 10 list of best horror films of 2026, I give Child high recommendations for fear-fare cinephiles of all stripes. It is the official submission of Luxembourg for the “Best International Feature Film” category of the 99th Academy Awards in 2027, and for good reason.
Child, from Cynefilms, will be in UK cinemas from 2nd October, 2026.
