April 13, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Barry Jay
Culture Representation: Taking place in California, mostly in the mid-2010s, the dramatic film “Like Father Like Son” features a predominantly white group of people (with a African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: An adult son of a convicted serial killer, who is awaiting death-row execution, tries to fight off the feeling that he has inherited his father’s murderous tendencies.
Culture Audience: “Like Father Like Son” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and terribly made crime dramas with gratuitous violence.
“Like Father Like Son” is an utterly trashy drama about a convicted serial killer’s son who uses his father’s criminal history as an excuse to also become a serial killer. The screenplay, direction, film editing and most of the acting are horrendous. This is the type of movie that has no redeeming qualities and is actually quite soulless and empty.
Written and directed by Barry Jay, “Like Father Like Son” takes place in California, mostly in the mid-2010s. However, the movie begins in the summer of 1990, in Richmond, California. It’s a flashback scene that shows Gabriel “Gabe” McKinnon (played by Dermot Mulroney) at his job as a park sanitation worker. One day, Gabe is outside in the park when he sees a teenage bully named Lonnie (played by Pappy Faulkner) beating up a smaller teen named Gary (played by Jonathan Tysor), who is no match for muscular Lonnie. Gary had a comic book that Lonnie tore up before this physical assault.
Gabe is offended by what he sees. Gary manages to run away. And what does Gabe do? He murders Lonnie by stabbing Lonnie in the neck and then viciously bludgeoning Lonnie. There’s a witness to this murder: Gabe’s son Eli, who is 7 or 8 years old. Gabe orders Eli to go home. Gabe gets arrested and convicted of first-degree murder and is given the death penalty as his sentence.
The movie then fast-forwards about 25 years later, when Eli (played by Dylan Flashner) is in his early 30s. Eli is a bachelor who works as a low-level telemarketer for a company called Holder Last Insurance. Eli is terrible at getting sales for this job, where he is openly disrespected by his boss Jake (played by Jim Klock, who is one of the producers of this awful movie). It’s only a matter of time before Eli will get fired.
Making matters worse for Eli, he’s having financial problems that have led to having his truck repossessed. He’s also gotten behind on the rent at the house where he lives. His landlord Tzipora (played by Prima Apollinaare), who lives with her elderly rabbi father (played by Daniel Lench), is so generous and understanding, not only does she give Eli more time to pay the rent that he owes, but she also gives him some free groceries. Eli promises he’ll pay back what he owes when he has the money.
Meanwhile, Eli is in therapy that is paid for by the government because Eli is the child of a death-row inmate. Eli’s mother abandoned him “a long time ago,” so Eli grew up in foster care after his father Gabe was sent to prison. Eli’s therapist Anabelle Weiss (played by Mayim Bialik) is professional and compassionate.
Eli confides in Anabelle that he’s had uncontrollable rage and thoughts of harming people. Eli believes he might have inherited a gene from his father that would make Eli a serial killer, even though there’s no scientific proof that being a serial killer is a biologically inherited trait. Annabelle tells Eli, “This isn’t about your father. You have to control your rage, how it will affect your life.”
Annabelle suggests to Eli that he should visit Gabe in prison before Gabe is executed, so that Eli can better understand Gabe. It seems like terrible advice because Eli doesn’t seem interested or ready to establish a relationship with Gabe. Eli has his own problems to deal with, but he takes Annabelle’s advice and eventually visits Gabe in prison.
Before Eli’s prison visit happens, Eli is so desperate for money, he sells one of the last valuables that he has: an inherited watch. He goes to a sleazy lowlife named Sam (played by Eric Michael Cole), who offers to buy the watch for well below the market value. Eli does some haggling but eventually agrees to sell the watch for only $50. Later, Eli buys a gun from Sam.
Feeling lonely and depressed, Eli goes to a bar and picks up a sassy woman named Hayley Moretti (played by Ariel Winter), who is a sex worker and a thief. Hayley has a one-night stand with Eli, who wakes up the next morning to find his wallet is missing. He accuses Hayley of stealing his wallet.
Hayley denies it, but he strangles her unconscious so he can look through her purse. And sure enough, Eli finds his wallet in Hayley’s purse. When Hayley regains consciousness, she calls Eli a “psycho” and leaves in a huff. It won’t be the last time that Hayley and Eli see each other.
Eli gets fired from his job. He decides to take his therapist’s advice about visiting Gabe. At the prison, Gabe is unapologetic for his crimes. Gabe can see that Eli is very troubled when Eli admits that he has uncontrollable rages.
Gabe tells Eli, “Maybe we’re a little more alike than you think.” Eli denies it and says he could never murder anyone. And in this atrocious movie that has the subtlety of a bulldozer, that’s exactly when you know it won’t be long before Eli murders someone.
That moment happens when Eli sees Hayley being attacked by a man in the dark shadows outside of a building at night. Without hesitation, Eli takes a rock and bashes it repeatedly over the man’s head. Hayley doesn’t seem to have any qualms about this gruesome and unnecessary murder. She thanks Eli and asks him if she could temporarily move in with Eli because she needs a place to stay.
A reminder: The last time Hayley saw Eli, he strangled her until she was unconscious. She has now witnessed Eli as a cold-blooded murderer. And now, she wants to live with him. The movie tries to make it look romantic, but it all looks so repulsive.
You know how this movie is going to go as soon as Eli and Hayley start living together. They fall “in love,” while he continues his serial killing. He keeps it a secret from Hayley, even though she already knows he’s a murderer. Apparently, Hayley thinks that the murder she saw Eli commit was okay with her because the person who was killed was attacking her.
As for Gabe, his death-row fate is inevitable. Gabe gets a new cellmate named Dennis (played by Jonathan Shores), who brags to Gabe that he’s in prison for sexually abusing children. In prison, there’s a hierarchy of criminals where child abusers are considered the worst and the lowest of the low. It comes as no surprise that loose cannon Gabe brutally murders Dennis. This murder (which Gabe apparently confessed to willingly) results in Gabe’s execution date being moved up.
“Like Father, Like Son” tries to make Eli’s killings look justified because he goes after people who hurt others. In one scene, he murders a thief who robbed a homeless man. Eli gets a new job as a newspaper delivery driver. He is hired by a no-nonsense boss named Louise (played by Vivica A. Fox), who is one of many characters in “Like Father Like Son” who just show up to say some lines of dialogue but didn’t need to be in the story at all.
At one point in the movie, Eli and Hayley move to San Diego to start a new life when Hayley finds out that she’s pregnant. Eli’s murder spree doesn’t stop. And you know exactly what’s going to happen when Hayley confides in Eli that her stepfather sexually molested her when she was a child, and her mother knew about this sexual abuse but did nothing about it. Eli’s murders become less and less justifiable until he starts killing anyone who makes him angry.
“Like Father Like Son” has some very tacky editing, where Eli’s murders are often shown in a montage of freeze frames. The movie rambles along with no purpose and is just a series of scenes of Eli becoming more mentally unstable and murdering people in the process. The music score is bombastic, while the movie’s pacing is erratic.
Perhaps the only person in the cast who doesn’t give a bland or terrible performance is Bialik, but that’s not saying much because she’s only in the movie for about five minutes. “Like Father Like Son” seems to be an endorsement of the idea that serial killers can at least partially blame their crimes on having an inherited gene that makes them murderers, instead of the murderers taking full responsibility for their actions. Even if the movie’s filmmaking had been better, it’s still a heinous concept for a movie that isn’t worth anyone’s time.
Lionsgate released “Like Father Like Son” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on January 31, 2025.
