In the dead of night, a young girl is awoken by the terrifying screams of a creature in the woods. Journeying from the safety of her picture-perfect family home, Tinja, described as a ‘princess’ by her two-faced mother, finds a wounded crow that ultimately succumbs to its wounds but leaves behind a delicate egg in its now abandoned nest. Rescuing the egg from the terrors of the deep dark woods, the young girl places the object under her pillow, only to find over the next few days that it appears to be growing at an unnatural rate.
From this fairytale setup, Finnish director Hanna Bergholm metamorphoses her debut feature Hatching into a twisted if often on-the-nose body-horror parable about coming-of-age and womanhood, opting for a modern take on the folktale in the mold of Cronenberg rather than Walt Disney. Central to this grim vision of childhood in transformation is the creature that hatches from Tinja’s rescued egg, a giant avian beast whose bulging eyes, corpse-thin arms, and piercing beak punctured with human-like teeth appears to be the result of a bird-human crossbreeding experiment gone horribly wrong, à la Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986). Indeed, the practical effects behind this low-budget flick instantly command attention and praise, particularly amongst so many VFX-crafted and often weightless monstrosities found elsewhere in the genre as it stands today. As the creature, who comes to be called Alli after a nursery rhyme sung by Tinja and her (unnamed) Mother, continues to grow and foster its own desires and motivations, seemingly prompted by Tinja’s own emotional highs and lows, Alli soon comes to resemble Tinja herself, although in a monstrous twin form.
In its social commentary concerning the apparent emotional duality of a young girl entering womanhood, Hatching feels neither original nor particularly innovative, with films like Carrie (1976), Let the Right One In (2008), Raw (2016) and The Witch (2015) treading similar ground but with comparatively more artistic flair and originality. The subtleties of these latter films, in particular, are lacking in Hatching, with its thematic evocation of evil doppelgängers and dual/dueling bodies articulated through often blatant and heavy-handed visual means. At times the script reads as if scriptwriter Ilja Rautsi came across that much ridiculed and memed piece of faux-philosophy – ‘Inside you there are two wolves…’ – and ran with it as sincere and profound gospel. Similarly, a subplot focusing on the mother’s ‘influencer’ lifestyle and social media-devoted persona – parading out the family for photoshoots and blog entries as if they were in an advertisement for a minimalist IKEA living room set – is likewise forced.
At the end of the day, Hatching does offer 90 mins of body-horror fun, with some engaging creature effects and gory spectacle, even if its central conceit of good-egg/bad-egg duality and the superficialities of social media identity as performance feels slightly too brash.
Notes from the Multiplex 