Animation
Blood of Zeus
Creativity abounds here, but those artistic measures can’t blur the obvious issues that families are sure to discover.
What officials know: A woman in her early 30s, dressed only in a nightgown and accompanied by a 12-year-old girl, runs out of the woods and gets hit by a car. The pair is quickly whisked to a local German hospital. The girl’s name is Hannah—a palindrome, she tells the paramedics.
What officials don’t: everything else.
Hannah says her last name is Goliath, though she admits that she “picked it out just now.” Her mother’s name is Lena, Hannah says, and her blood type is AB Negative—helpful information, considering how much of it she’s lost.
But when doctors start operating on the woman, they quickly (and nearly tragically) discover she’s not AB Negative. Indeed, Lena might not even be the woman’s name.
But who is she? Where did she come from? And where is Hannah’s little brother? The boy left behind to clean (as Hannah says) the bloodstains off the rug?
Hannah seems reluctant to talk much about her home life. But slowly, with patient prodding from first Nurse Ruth, then detective Aida Kurt, a grim story begins to take shape.
Hannah draws a picture of a home with barred, blackened windows. She says that her mother is rather clumsy: “She already has enough bruises from banging into things.” And Hannah shows her hands—front and back—to anyone she meets. It’s a family rule, she says, intended to prove that she’s not hiding anything that “can harm ourselves or someone else.”
Meanwhile, police wonder whether Lena, the woman Hannah calls “Mama,” just might be Lena Beck, a woman who vanished 13 years ago. Could that ancient cold case finally get not only an ending, but a happy one?
Lena Beck’s parents hope so. For 13 years, they’ve waited for any word of their daughter. For 13 years, investigator Gerd Bühling has promised to bring Lena back, no matter the cost.
But when the Becks and Gerd arrive at the hospital, they quickly realize that this isn’t the end of an unsolved mystery; it’s the beginning.
Dear Child, based on Romy Hausmann’s bestselling German novel, is Netflix’s latest international hit. The German series has been at or near the top of Netflix’s top 10 TV charts recently, and it racked up 49.1 million hours of viewing time in its first seven days. Some compare it to David Fincher’s Gone Girl. Others are reminded of 2015’s Oscar-winning Room.
Certainly, the mystery makes for compelling viewing. Netflix knows not just how to plant people on their couches, but also how to encourage them to stay there for a one-night, season-long binge. As Dear Child’s plot twists and turns, plenty of viewers strap themselves in for the ride.
But what a difficult, sometimes stomach-churning ride it can be.
A viewer’s first hurdle is the premise itself. While Hannah believes that her family is a perfectly normal one, anyone listening would soon understand that she, “Mama,” and her brother, Jonathan, have been held captive for years. The woman cowers before her mostly unseen captor. And when she cries in front of the children—breaking one of the captor’s many rules—she’s punished. We learn that the woman is habitually raped, her hands cuffed to the bed to ensure her compliance.
While the rape is more suggested than shown, Dear Child offers less restraint elsewhere. This promises to be a violent, bloody story. In the first couple of episodes, limbs are torn off by explosives and organs removed on a hospital table. And when Hannah makes a loud noise—startling the nurse caring for her—Hannah explains, “That’s what it sounds like when you bash someone’s skull in.”
While the show is German, some profanities make it into English (be it dubbed or subtitled), including the f- and s-word.
With some exceptions, the content in Dear Child isn’t intended to be gratuitous. Its makers want viewers to be drawn in by the mystery, not titillated or repelled by sex or gore. But that doesn’t excuse or mitigate the problems that we see here, and it’s hardly the “must watch” show that some contend it is. As compelling as Dear Child is, it could well cost viewers—especially children—dearly.
A woman and a 12-year-old girl are whisked to the hospital after the woman—whom Hannah says is her mother—is hit by a car. In another part of Germany, longtime investigator Gerd Bühling wonders whether this woman, apparently named Lena, might be the same Lena whose disappearance he investigated 13 years ago. Soon he and Lena’s parents are en route to the hospital—where they receive a couple of very serious surprises.
Lena’s face is covered in blood, bruises and cuts from the hit-and-run car crash. Several surgical scenes follow, including one wherein Lena’s bloody spleen is removed. She suffers some convulsions at times. In flashback, Lena cowers before her captor and gets hit with what appears to be a hairbrush. Hannah (the girl) tells the nurse watching her that her mother is “quite accident prone” and often covered in bruises because of that tendency. “I always help Mama when her hands start shaking or when she forgets how to do things,” Hannah says.
Hannah lets other disturbing hints drop as well. She mimics the sound of someone’s skull being bashed in. (“In rare cases, a blow to the head leads to death,” she solemnly intones.) She says that her Mama wanted to “accidentally” kill her father. She says that her little brother is still at home, cleaning bloodstains off the carpet (even though he’s also scared of blood); indeed, we see the boy scrubbing a red stain dutifully as a very still body lies in the background. Hannah also knows that a circulation machine “provides fresh air so the windows don’t need to open.” (In a flashback, Hannah’s father—wearing what looks like a scuba outfit—walks in on his nearly comatose family to tell them their own circulation machine is back on.)
We see Lena’s bare shoulders during surgery. We hear six uses of the s-word.
Matthias and Karin Beck swear that “Lena” isn’t their daughter—despite a telltale scar on her hand. But, somehow, Hannah must be their granddaughter: After all, she looks just like Lena did when she was 12. Even more mysteriously, Hannah seems to recognize Matthias, and she calls him “grandfather.” Meanwhile, the search is on for the compound where Hannah had been kept; she says that her younger brother is still in there.
In flashback, we see the aftermath of “Lena” being apparently raped by her captor. She lies on a bed, clothed and nearly comatose, as the hands of her captor unlock the handcuffs holding her to the bed. “That was lovely, Lena,” the man tells her. “Thank you.” In the present, Lena recovers from her car crash, her face and arms covered in stitches and bruises. She sometimes suffers convulsions both in the past and present, and she asks the nurses to tell her if she’s pregnant.
Someone steps on a mine and suffers bloody, grotesque injuries, including a blown-off leg.
In delirium, Lena eyes an overhead light and thinks to herself that her captor is “my god,” as he creates the day and night. Hannah visits her still apparently unconscious mother in the hospital. “He is always with you,” she whispers to her, and she places a jagged piece of glass in Lena’s hands.
In flashback, we see a different Lena—apparently an earlier victim of the captor—enjoying her life before her kidnapping. We see her drinking and smoking and are told she was probably doing “some other stuff.” There may be a suggestion that Lena’s bisexual: We’re told she had an on-again, off-again boyfriend, and we see her kissing some guy at a nightclub. But she also talks with a “Flo” on the phone and insists that her flirtation with “Lucy” was harmless. (It’s the last phone call she made.)
Matthias acts erratically, and he sneaks into the room where Hannah is sleeping and whispers, “I’ll take you home, Hannah.” When officials ask why Hannah recognizes him, he reacts angrily. “Do you think I kidnapped Hannah?! My own flesh and blood?”
We hear two f-words and a couple of other profanities (“d–n” and “h—”).
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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