Hatching (Bergholm, 2022)

The debut feature of Hanna Bergholm, the appreciably twisted, squirm-inducing body-horror creature-feature, Hatching is one hell of a calling card. It’s a film with a metaphor so blatant that it’s practically slapping you across the face – the unravelling of a mother/daughter relationship by way of a giant, pulsating egg, and what hatches from it – but it’s in the ways it picks this central metaphor apart, and the creeping, dread-soaked atmosphere that Hatching excels. 

The film opens tellingly, with a scene that feels something like a modern-day revision of the iconic Blue Velvet opening sequence, all suburban idyll just barely hiding the violence and rot that rests beneath. Tinja (Siiri Solalinna, startlingly good in a tricky, physical role) is the young daughter of a wellness-blogger played by Sophia Heikkilä, who is obsessed with cultivating the image of pristine domestic heaven to her unseen legions of followers. We see the four members of the family – including a milquetoast husband and a ratbag younger son – and marvel at the spitting image the children create of their parents. As with any cinematic portrayal of suburban bliss, however, there is a twist to come, first in the form of a crow that gets into their polished McMansion and is summarily killed by Tinja’s mother. Later, Tinja discovers that the crow left something behind – an egg, gently pulsating red. What emerges from the rapidly expanding egg is a sight to see – without spoiling anything, the film takes a left-turn into kitschier, ickier horror around this point and, pleasingly, never looks back. 

It’s a well-performed, grisly, if slightly obvious thing – a film with very little interest in subtlety. What allows it to work is a sly willingness to lean into goofiness in places.

The wonderful creature design, a mix of puppetry and special effects makeup by Prometheus and Star Wars designer Gustav Hoegen, is a winking combination of creepiness, tenderness and outright oddity that proves to be Hatching’s thrumming engine. It’s a testament to the effectiveness of practical effects to draw strong reactions out of an audience – here utilised in some truly unsettling and disgusting body horror – where lazier productions might have settled for something computer generated. As the film races toward a tense but thematically messy climax, Hatching emerges as slightly confused in what it’s trying to say, but is never less than engaging in the attempt to express it.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE