Entering awards season two years removed from the success of his directorial debut The Father, a film that was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two, Florian Zeller’s follow-up, The Son, had some lofty, albeit slightly unrealistic expectations, if for no other reason that some deemed it a continuation of the story. In contrast, others viewed its Christmas Day limited release to mean that the production company believed the movie would hopefully receive the same critical acclaim (98% critics, 94% audience) as The Father and wanted to keep the film fresh in voters’ minds as possible. Sadly, the film failed to resonate with either group (a paltry 26% critics and a lukewarm 67% audience). As a result, the film will fail to reach $1,000,000 at the box office despite a star-studded cast that flanked (and outmatched) the relatively unknown Zen McGrath (Dig), who played the title character.

Eleven combined Academy Award nominations (including four wins) between four actors help to bring the story of Nicholas, a 17-year-old high school junior who is unsuccessfully battling various mental health problems and has recently stopped attending school, much to his parents’ surprise. Nicholas lives a modest lifestyle with his mother, Kate (Laura Dern – Marriage Story, The Master), while his father, Peter (Hugh Jackman – Logan, Bad Education), lives on the other side of New York City with his much younger wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby – Pieces of a Woman, The World To Come) and their newborn-ish son, Noah. Then, in a single, chilling scene, Peter’s narcissistic father, Anthony (Anthony Hopkins – The Silence of the Lambs, Armaggedon Time), appears, offering his take on the situation and his job as Peter’s father.

Peter seems to have everything. He thrives in his profession, earning plenty of money, influence, and opportunity, allowing him to live a comfortable, if not lavish, lifestyle. He has, so he thinks, successfully distanced himself from Kate while still maintaining a loving relationship with his teenage son, which has allowed him to devote more of his time to Beth and Noah. However, when Kate appears at his front door and tells Peter about Nichola’s truancy and inability to connect with him in the way a mother and child should, Nick’s life instantly becomes much more complicated. He takes in Nick, believing a little father and son time will fix him and get him pointed back in the right direction. But he soon realizes that each time his son takes a step forward, he takes a step back, and Peter doesn’t know how to “fix him.” Peter needs to juggle his advancing career (he has an offer for a dream position in Washington DC). To the audience, it might feel as if Nicholas’s problems burden Peter, though they never offer that impression. On the contrary, a father wants to help his troubled son but doesn’t know how. And it could be the first time in his life that he hasn’t been able to repair something broken.

Zeller does deal well with portraying the issue of true mental illness here, though. Nicholas’s parents constantly ask him what is wrong with him so that they can help him. They want to know if a specific incident at school caused him to stop showing up. Or if there was a relationship, he wanted to go a certain way that didn’t, and now he’s struggling with unprocessed feelings. However, Nicholas cannot pinpoint one specific incident or distressing thing that has happened to him. He is mentally unwell—his inability to express why frustrates him as much as it does those trying to help. Zeller layers home that people can struggle mentally without a specific incident that has caused them to feel this way. It’s a timely take on mental health stigmas that become more prominent each year.

McGrath’s performance is good itself, though he is outmatched by the prowess of Jackman and, to a lesser extent, Durn and Kerby. His performance is raw but doesn’t overact or glamorize his feelings. Zeller has McGrath’, more or less, throw his hands up in the air and say, “I don’t know,” each time his parents press him or ask him how they can help. It is heartwrenching seeing such a young person struggle as he does. Hopefully, it brings to the forefront how real depression and anxiety are to those who experience them firsthand and those who do not. The story was a big miss with critics (27%), while audiences gave it a more favorable response (68%). I believe it to lie somewhere in the middle of those two numbers. The Son was a colossal failure at the box office, earning less than one million dollars domestically. However, The Father earned just over two million dollars yet amassed six Oscar nominations, including two wins. Box office revenue doesn’t signal the success of a movie nearly as much as it did even a decade ago.