Writen by: Ilja Rautsi / Directed by: Hanna Bergholm / Distributed in The UK by: Picturehouse Entertainment / 91 Minutes / Released: 16th September 2022
Review by Rob Deb. Read more of Rob's reviews here.
21st June 2022
The Pitch: Tinja is a 12-year-old gymnast who's desperate to please her image-obsessed mother. After finding a wounded bird in the woods, she brings its strange egg home, nestles it in her bed and nurtures it until it hatches. The creature that emerges soon becomes her closest friend and a living nightmare, plunging Tinja into a twisted reality that her mum refuses to see.
Eggs. Scrambled. Facile. Beauty is not changing. Easter. Boiled. Ovarian.
There is not much that can't be alluded to in this neat horror where the question of what makes a person - and a family of cuckoos - worth saving is asked. A sharp film that starts with bleak absurdities that remind you of ‘Tramadol nights’, this evolves in tandem with the creature into a full-on horror feature with enough shocks and surprises to keep even the most ardent genre fans on their toes. We start with an idyllic family being totally constructed by a matriarch. The daughter is eager to please and achieve in each and every way. But nature crashes into the world, and, as nature does, soon takes root whatever our attempts to repress.
The journey of our young heroine Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) is complex, as we slowly see the ‘real family’ unravel, thanks to the obsessive abusive behaviour that goes beyond overbearing by her mother (Sophia Heikkilä). The Father (Jani Volanen) is so passive you soon begin to think that maybe an affair isn't a bad idea. And the entitlement of her brother, Matias (Oiva Ollila) would, frankly, make Joffrey Lannister seem modest.
Within this, you have the egg. The creature design of her new companion ‘Alli’ is marvellous - a physical effect that adds a real sense of weight in every scene it is in. As the little aberrations of its actions take more and more space, with dead pets and random vandalism, we see Tinja and Alli's empathic bond show how so much can be challenged in this family. The film adds layer upon layer at each turn. The lighting and sound are suitably suspenseful and tense with an etheric atmosphere. The creature is also well animated and designed. This is not a quick thrill show with turning the lights out after a half-second observation. At the same time, you can see a Geiger-level of stealth has been applied, so it really could be in the wardrobe or under the bed. As the violence (and owner of the creature both in the world and over Tinja) grows we also see more of the reality she exhibits. When we meet the other lover of her mother we see the first real encounter with a respectable adult outside of her gym instructor and a glimpse of a genuine world. At the same time, you do wonder what he sees in this image fixated arch matriarch her mother is.
Hatching becomes about a young woman trying to get the world to recognise her humanity in the face of trying to fit into the contrived perfection of her family. It's paced well and full of quirks, comedy, and metaphor, but never too heavy-handed. There was a large part of the film I did wonder… does the monster exist? Given what I felt in my head about the family dynamic was scary enough…And that is a sense of true horror. Watch it with the lights out. And then turn them on right after. And have a Bovril. You'll need it.