Peter is a busy New York lawyer with a new wife and a baby. His ex-wife asks him to take in their teenage son, Nicholas, who has stopped going to school and is deeply sad. Peter wants to be a better dad than his own cold father was. The film is a heavy family drama about love, guilt, depression, and parents who do not know how to help.
This movie is about mental health and a broken family, not politics or identity. Viewers mainly see a dad trying to reach a troubled teen, divorce pain, and a tragic end. The main cast is a standard family setup. Talk centers on feeling empty, missing school, and parents who fail to listen. There is no girl-power push, race lecture, queer storyline, or activist message. Creators and ads treated it as a serious family story. Online and news talk attacked how it handled suicide and felt fake or mean, not that it was “woke.”
Community feedback
Was our 9% Woke rating accurate?
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Son.
Woke representation / casting
Main family is standard casting with no race or gender swap of known roles. A black doctor/therapist appears in a small support part, which fits a modern city setting and is not sold as a diversity spotlight. No “brilliant minority leader” pattern or quota-style star roles. Identity casting is not the point of the film.
8%
Woke political dialogue
Talk is about depression, school, divorce, work stress, and parents who fail. Peter may have a political job path, but lines do not push modern activist slogans about race, gender, or systemic identity politics.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
Story is about mental illness, family break-up, and guilt. That is personal and medical, not race, queer, or DEI identity as the engine of the plot. A normal viewer would not read this as a social-justice message movie.
0%
Western institutional / cultural critique
Shows a cold, absent grandfather and a busy, imperfect dad. That can feel like a knock on bad fathering, but it stays personal, not a modern activist attack on patriarchy, Christianity, or Western life as systems. Ordinary family-drama critique only.
10%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. Film adapts Zeller’s own play; changes are stage-to-screen, not identity or DEI rewrites of established icons or history.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Public anger focused on melodrama and suicide handling. No notable right-leaning or anti-woke campaign treated this film as woke propaganda or DEI product.
0%
Creator track record context
Director score is near zero; star-producer and other producers sit in the low-to-mid 20s or below. Overall crew context is mild industry-normal, not a known activist package driving this title.
12%
Production
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