If You Loved 'The Babadook', This 92%-Rated Finnish Horror Is the Most Unsettling Gem You Haven't Seen
This is an unconventional and uncomfortable horror movie with a profound social subtext.
In 2022, Hatching, the debut feature of Finnish director Hanna Bergholm, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
The movie is a sensitive yet brutal exploration of maternal pressure, teenage adolescence, and the price of imposed perfection. Bergholm employs body horror to illustrate how repressed emotions manifest.
What Is 'Hatching' About?
12-year-old Tinja is a gymnast who tries her best to please her image-conscious mother – she must be the perfect daughter and excel in sports. One day, after a series of unfortunate events, Tinja finds an abandoned bird's egg. She takes it home and hides it somewhere warm.
The egg grows to an incredible size, and soon, a strange creature hatches, shocking the entire family.
This anthropomorphic monster, with clawed feet and a massive beak, is completely out of place in the home, much like Tinja's teenage transformations are out of place on her mother's blog.
'Hatching' Is a Tense Body Horror Film Directed by a Woman That Will Keep You on the Edge of Your Seat
Debutante Hanna Bergholm has a keen sense of horror and understands precisely why a woman's life is akin to a body horror movie, even off-screen.
A girl crushed by her mother's demands seeks warmth by caring for a dead bird's egg. The chick hatches and grows into a creature that would rather cuddle in a closet at night than with its mother.
Bergholm utilizes genre tools often found in horror films by female directors, such as a persistent, lingering anxiety, a piercing tactile quality capable of causing physical discomfort, and emotional helplessness.
Similar tones can be found in Julia Ducournau's Titane, Jennifer Kent's The Babadook, and Mimi Cave's Fresh.
'Hatching' Uses Body Horror as a Metaphor for the Process of Growing Up
Hatching seamlessly fits into the modern horror landscape, evoking terror through contrasts like floral prints and bloodstains on white sheets.
Bergholm goes overboard in some places by painstakingly naming the problems, but the central allegory works throughout – the movie illustrates how repressed emotions, such as anger, resentment, and jealousy, take on a form and will of their own.
What Did Critics & Viewers Think of 'Hatching'?
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Hatching has 92% from critics and 59% from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes.
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On IMDb, the movie has a score of 6.2/10.
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On Letterboxd, Hatching scored 3.1/5.0.
Where to Watch 'Hatching'?
Hatching is available to stream on AMC+.
