A killer premise with complicated execution

Scary youngsters have lengthy been a staple of the horror style: The Exorcist, The Omen, Orphan… the listing goes on and on. However a brand new HBO present takes the archetype of the cursed baby and ages it manner down, till the item of our nightmares is only a child. The child, to be exact.

HBO’s The Child introduces us to Natasha, aka Tash (Michelle de Swarte), a lady who has no want to have youngsters. She will get saddled with one anyway when a child actually falls out of the sky and into her arms. Who’re the child’s actual mother and father? Why is he so hooked up to Natasha? And most significantly, why does virtually everybody the child meets die a painful dying? These are the mysteries The Child seeks to unravel.

Regardless of being marketed as a horror-comedy, The Child lacks significantly significant laughs or scares. It is a story a few killer child and the problems of motherhood: It must be bizarre and fascinating! As a substitute, The Child meanders by a collection of predictable horror set items, solely simply starting to select up steam within the latter half of the six episodes made obtainable for evaluate.

“The Child” tackles motherhood head-on

At its core, The Child is about motherhood and the myriad methods by which having a toddler can change your life. Tash emphatically doesn’t need a baby, nor does she even like being close to youngsters. It is her worst nightmare when the child arrives in her life. Within the eyes of the folks round her, her identification turns into tied to his.

The newborn’s presence in Tash’s life is a transparent allegory for the all-consuming nature of parenting, however in Tash’s case, it goes deeper. She didn’t need or plan for this child, calling to thoughts the lack of autonomy of girls compelled to hold undesirable pregnancies to time period. Early episodes depend on fairly surface-level observations about this concept, however to its credit score, The Child digs deeper into this because it goes on. It additionally by no means falls into the entice of Tash abruptly discovering she’s a mom at coronary heart and creating maternal expertise. She is firmly within the “I do not need youngsters camp,” and that is greater than OK. The Child can be stuffed with characters who do need youngsters; that is additionally greater than OK.

The present is handiest when it examines completely different folks’s connections to motherhood. An early scene sees Tash clashing along with her pals Mags (Shvorne Marks), a brand new mom, and Rita (Isy Suttie), who’s three months pregnant. This battle, laid out with tight performances and just-uncomfortable-enough dialogue, is a defining second for Tash. She sees youngsters as a pressure on life and friendships. For his or her half, Mags and Rita do not perceive why Tash cannot merely be completely satisfied for them.

We do not start to know Tash’s sophisticated relationship to motherhood for just a few episodes, once we be taught extra about her household. Whereas Tash would by no means dream about having a toddler, her sister Bobbi (Amber Grappy) desperately desires to undertake one along with her associate Sam (Genesis Lynea). Each Tash and Bobbi’s ideas about having youngsters stem from their very own childhoods and their thorny relationship with their mom Barbara (Sinéad Cusack). The dynamic between these three girls is arguably extra fascinating than the killer child, however its improvement is stilted as a result of present’s tonal inconsistency.

A disappointing horror-comedy

Michelle de Swarte in “The Child.” Credit score: Rekha Garton / HBO

With an idea as thrilling as “cursed homicide child,” it is a disgrace that The Child would not take greater dangers with its horror or its darkish comedy. The brunt of the humor rests on de Swarte’s reactions to the weird occasions of the collection. She delivers the hell out of her one-sided conversations with the child, and even the awkward manner she holds him elicits a chuckle or two. However de Swarte’s sturdy main efficiency is not sufficient to distract from the truth that there’s little or no humorous materials within the script itself.

By way of horror, The Child does a stable job constructing stress because the child begins his killing spree, particularly due to composer Lucrecia Dalt’s disconcerting rating. It isn’t lengthy earlier than you come to affiliate the child’s wide-eyed gaze and cooing with oncoming doom. And if he begins to cry? You are in huge hazard.

Sadly, The Child‘s horror methods plateau early on, with pretty clichéd bounce scares and dream sequences doing a disservice to the larger concepts The Child clearly desires to discover. Horror intersects finest with The Child‘s key themes of motherhood and autonomy within the present’s fifth episode, which delves into the child’s origins. No spoilers, however that episode made me really feel a deep bodily dread. It is a horror excessive that the remainder of the present would not fairly attain — though given how a lot The Child has to say and the way a lot potential the idea has, I might be completely satisfied if episodes 7 or eight show me mistaken.