Hatching

Hanna Bergholm’s brooding coming-of-age fairytale goes for the gizzard.

Foul one’s nest: Siiri Solalinna and a bad egg.

Outside of Hitchcock, horror films about nefarious birds have traditionally been relegated to low-budget B films, boasting such taglines as ‘You Don’t Have a Wing of a Prayer!’ and ‘Talons of Terror!’. With a wink to other onscreen Aves, comes a Finnish film that dissects coming-of-age horrors.

There’s a long tradition in the horror genre of associating maturation and monsters. American International Pictures exploited the territory back in the 1950s, with juveniles going ape in films like I Was a Teenage Werewolf. In more recent years, Teeth, The Witch and Raw have depicted coming-of-age as the rise of feminine power. Most of these films take the form of cautionary tales about repressed emotion and trauma, with peers and mother figures serving as likely triggers. Take for instance the best example of that motif, Brian De Palma’s Carrie. The fantastic aspects play out as metaphors for puberty, anger and adolescent angst. For once a teenager has hatched, it can hardly be put back in its shell.

As with the recent Turning Red and Everything Everywhere All At Once, Hanna Bergholm’s debut feature Hatching is all about the mother/daughter relationship. Twelve-year-old gymnast in training Tinja lives to please her image-conscious mother, who crows about her idyllic Finnish family to the followers of her blog ‘Lovely Everyday Life’. The family seems to accept that tweeting about life has become more important than actually living it. When her mother captures a gymnastic slip-up, she tells Tinja: “No one will know, I cropped it out.” And it’s what lies outside the blog frame that becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. Tinja’s mother treats her as a miniature version of herself, expecting perfection and meanwhile exposing Tinja to the adult world. When a crow invades the family photoshoot, it’s a portent of things to come. Summoned to the fog-filled forest by its caw, Tinja discovers a strange bespeckled egg. She decides to incubate the egg in her teddy bear and the unnatural takes its course.

Although Hatching manages to maintain composure, there’s a sense we’re walking on eggshells. As if one shot could transform the horror into laughter. Yet the metaphor continues cleverly nesting new commentary on adolescence into the happenings. In one of the most striking suggestions, consuming bird seed becomes a nod to bulimia. It all works thanks to the young actress Siiri Solalinna and two very important behind-the-scenes wizards, animatronics designer/creature FX supervisor Gustav Hoegen and Oscar-nominated effects make-up artist Conor O'Sullivan. Hoegen is responsible for bringing realism back to the inhabitants of a galaxy far, far away in Disney’s attempt at a third Star Wars trilogy; while O’Sullivan gave Nicole Kidman her famous Woolf snout in The Hours, and recently affixed fangs to Jared Leto’s Morbius. Echoing the puppetry and make-up effects of 80s fantasy films, these monster masters make the movie.

Original title: Pahanhautoja.

CHAD KENNERK

Cast: Siiri Solalinna, Sophia Heikkilä, Jani Volanen, Reino Nordin, Saija Lentonen, Oiva Ollila, Ida Määttänen. 

Dir Hanna Bergholm, Pro Mika Ritalahti, Niko Ritalahti and Nima Yousefi, Screenplay Ilja Rautsi, Ph Jarkko T. Laine, Pro Des Päivi Kettunen, Ed Linda Jildmalm, Music Stein Berge Svendsen, Costumes Ulrika Sjölin, Sound Carl Svensson. 

Silva Mysterium Oy-IFC Midnight.
91 mins. Finland/Sweden. 2022. US Rel: 29 April 2022. No Cert.