Like Father Like Son Review: A Sprinting Thriller

Dylan Flashner’s Eli fights to escape a violent hereditary cycle in Barry Jay’s fast-paced thriller Like Father Like Son, which ends before it begins.

Writer-director Barry Jay joins them with Like Father Like Son, though the film is more of a matter-of-fact presentation of the subject matter overlaid with the bleak colors of a conventional crime thriller.

Dermot Mulroney (of Laws of Man, Scream VI) plays Gabe, an impulsive, self-righteous murderer awaiting the death penalty for the crimes he has committed. The film centers around Gabe’s impact on his son Eli (Dylan Flashner) as the latter grows into a young adult and tries to resist what’s been passed down to him through genetics. Eli takes his own extreme countermeasures to end the cycle of brutality passed down generations, but, in his attempts, he might be inching closer to resembling the monster he so desperately wants to escape turning into.

Gabe is a character who resorts to murder in occasional spurts of spontaneous rage beyond just the one that got him in jail. His behavior comes from a place of twisted righteousness that poses the questions: Who gets to play God? Who gets to serve justice to the ones who commit heinous acts? In that case, can a heinous act against them be justified?

Like Father Like Son wastes no time warming up to the bloodshed or easing us into the family dynamics, as the ferocious act that eventually gets Eli’s father behind bars is the first thing we see and our first entryway into the characters. There is no time for introductions, yet what follows is a quite extensive opening credits sequence, comparable to that of an old-fashioned network crime series. The soundtrack and the particularly artificial way in which the first murder scene is shot feed into that strong resemblance even more. 

The film never manages to steer away from the network series similarities. If anything, it becomes progressively clearer that Eli’s story arc could’ve worked better in an extended episodic narrative. Barry Jay compresses an entire series’ worth of plot in a ninety-minute roller coaster, which is just enough time to cover all the familiar bases without expressing much ambition to challenge them.

The first act skips through Eli’s life, only showing us bits and pieces in a hectically assembled montage of miserable moments, during which Eli is shown to still be processing the trauma he has endured and wrestling with the mundane day-to-day. The film never dares to show us how exactly the trauma trickled down the family tree and dismisses any opportunity for bravery and complexity in its storytelling.

Brief scenes, such as the conversation with his therapist, feel like mere plot devices when there’s no mind paid to giving any emotional weight or substance to the character’s moments of realization—the pivotal moments meant to be the ones further advancing the story. The gears of the story keep turning anyway, of course, leaving the viewer inadvertently insensitive to Eli.

Instead, the main tool used to communicate Eli’s anger to the viewer is frantic editing, crowded with flashy fade-ins and fade-outs, choppy frame rate, and match cuts with superimposed visions of his dad. Scenes fly by, and conversations are treated like they’re disposable as we bear witness to on-the-nose dialogue that aggressively hammers down the essential theme one could have figured out just by looking at the film’s title alone. 

A jarring slam on the brakes occurs with the incorporation of Eli’s love interest, played by Ariel Winter (of Modern Family), as the film suddenly devotes its entire attention to the blossoming and slow decay of a Bonnie and Clyde-esque narrative. The sharp shift in the tempo doesn’t display any deeper understanding of how that could very easily kill your pacing later on.

Indulging in time skips once again, much like its beginning, Like Father Like Son tries to strike a conclusion that would have worked if the movie had dedicated more time to explore just how rotten Eli feels on the inside. More clarity on his decisions and motivations could have earned him a more effective ending.

Jay aims for a thrillingly relentless story, facing us with how family blood inevitably infects future generations—a grisly interpretation of the saying “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. However, the bigger picture reveals an unintentional parallel: Eli can’t help but constantly revert to his violent predispositions in much the same way as the film itself falls back on the conventional tropes it’s most susceptible to.

Like Father Like Son will be released in select US theaters, on digital and on demand on January 31, 2025.