Will (Tobi King Bakare) wakes up from a bad dream, but in truth, he’s waking up in the hospital. He’s been in a coma for more than a year and has no idea how it happened, where he is or what has gone on while he’s been asleep.

As he regains control of his body and begins to stitch together his mind, he finds his scientist father Richard (Steve Oram) has become more controlling than ever, refusing to allow him to see his mother Amelia (Ramona von Pusch), who also barely survived whatever put them both into intensive care.

Director and writer Sebastien Blanc does a great job of not only establishing Will’s survivor’s guilt but also his feelings of detachment as he’s lost his adoptive mother and it’s hammered home how little Richard wanted a son, much less a black child. The only time they seem to bond is horrifying, as they are bathed in red light as father invites son to hysterically laugh at the things that most upset the both of them,

Of course, the truth — why is Richard seeing so many blonde women? — is closer to The Brain That Wouldn’t Die than a tender drama about reconnection and loss of a parent. It’s more about how far someone will go to keep someone in their life. It might be selling itself as a genre film, sure, but it has a really deep emotional tug within the expected against nature surgical science fiction movie moments.

You can watch this on Tubi.