By John Corrado
The attention-grabbing title of director Todd Rohal’s perverted and profane X-rated satire Fuck My Son!, with its full expletive and exclamation point, is what will bring many into the theatre, seeking the next midnight staple. But the absurd title can only push it so far, and it stops being that funny early on.
Rohal’s film basically has one gimmick and can’t sustain itself beyond that, delivering a faux-edgy provocation that mainly gets by on trying to be as gross as possible. It starts off fun enough with a playful pre-show, but it loses momentum early on, and doesn’t really know how to get it back, beyond just repeating the title over and over again.
The film centres around an elderly woman named Vermina (played by Robert Longstreet in drag), who kidnaps other women to force them to have sex with her monstrous son Fabian (Steve Little, under heavy prosthetics). The latest victim is a mother (Tipper Newton), who gets taken along with her young daughter (Kynzie Colmery), and locked in there house until she fulfills the title demand.
Adapted from an underground comic book by Johnny Ryan, Fuck My Son! mainly serves to offer a parade of grotesqueries and bodily functions. The makeup that turns Longstreet into Vermina is admittedly somewhat impressive, and the prosthetics covering Little to turn him into the disfigured Fabian are convincingly gross (including his prehensile appendage).
This had all the makings of a new camp classic to be enjoyed ironically, but the one-joke premise – stretched thin at just over ninety minutes – barely even offers that beyond a few moments. Other scenes, such as Vermina extensively torturing the little girl, feel like they miss the mark completely, even as pitch black comedy.
There’s nothing wrong with being weird, provocative, and transgressive, but Fuck My Son! is just not very entertaining after a while, and begins to drag. It’s a film that pushes so far past the point of bad taste that it stops being fun and just becomes an endurance test. And, for a film that is supposed to be this beacon of artistic freedom and creative liberty, the extensive use of generative AI undercuts it all, and also just looks really ugly throughout the film.
I don’t claim to speak for anyone else, but even the Midnight Madness audience at times seemed unsure how to respond as the film went on, with several walkouts. But, as always with this sort of thing, your mileage may vary.
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