Child arrives with a premise that sounds like a pitch-deck collision: liberal EU guilt plus backwoods slasher logic plus a dying kid on a hospital waiting list. Somehow director Cyrus Neshvad makes the collision feel intentional rather than accidental, though the seams show. The setup is tight enough. Greg and Anne are separated parents united by a pre-adolescent son, Leo, who needs an organ transplant they can't get through official channels fast enough. Greg — the likable doctor who blames himself for the car accident that put Leo there — accompanies his ex across a border (the country is unnamed, the language Bulgarian) with cash, pre-arranged bribes, and bad faith from every direction. The class commentary is right there on the surface: Luxembourgers with money doing what Luxembourgers with money do, using poorer neighbors as a supply chain for their emergencies. Where the film earns its keep is in the formal moves. Neshvad and cinematographer Nikos Welter shift the entire color palette at the border crossing — a clean, declarative visual grammar that telegraphs 'you are no longer safe' without a single line of dialogue. Later, an LED-lit box becomes a ticking clock rendered in blue then orange then red, a neat piece of practical light design that does the emotional work without sentiment. These aren't accidental flourishes; they suggest a director who thinks in images. The bolder gamble is structural: Neshvad deliberately violates point-of-view conventions to toy with who the audience expects to survive. In a genre where survival probability is basically legible from the opening ten minutes, that kind of rule-breaking creates genuine unease. It's the film's sharpest move, and it lands. The liabilities are real, though. The inarticulate, physically disfigured antagonist is straight from the rural-horror playbook — sullen locals, dilapidated farmhouse, ominous clutter — and the film doesn't interrogate that iconography so much as deploy it. The liberal guilt is stippled on rather than structural; it doesn't change what kind of film this is. And the medical setup is frustratingly vague: we never learn which organ Leo needs, a narrative withholding that feels less like meaningful ambiguity and more like a script problem. Jump scares are plentiful and effective in the moment, but they're not what you'll be thinking about afterward. Child is a competent, occasionally formally clever entry in a crowded genre. It won't redefine horror, but it's built by someone who knows the rules well enough to break one of them at the right moment.
