Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) is a young gymnast, nervous about her upcoming debut competition, made worse by pressure from her mother (Sophia Heikkilä) who runs a video blog chronically the daily life of her idyllic Finish family. One day in the woods behind the house, Tinja finds a small egg and brings it back home to care for it. To her surprise, the egg grows to an incredible size, but to her horror, when it hatches, the creature looks toward Tinja to be its mother. 

Hatching, an 86-minute Finish horror film released by IFC Midnight after an attention garnering bow at Sundance, was directed and conceived by Hanna Bergholm with Ilja Rautsi providing the script. The frightening allegory is seeking to take down a wide number of social issues in its brief runtime, and as such, it is biting off a little more than it can chew to present its thesis fully. Bogged down by the conventions of genre, Hatching still manages to create a thrilling and exciting narrative, albeit frustrating. 

Solalinna in the lead is incredibly effective as the young girl traverses through the labyrinth of adolescence. Having such a meek character is a bold choice on behalf of the writing team as it runs the risk of Tinja fading into the background of the narrative as chaos erupts around her. That is not the case in Hatching. Solalinna uses the quietness of the role to create a mystery that surrounds and drives the narrative forward while also building an incredible amount of sympathy with the audience. This is the young actress’ first role and even with the range that it demands as well as the weight of essentially carrying the picture, it is a resounding success. 

Heikkilä as the mother fills an antagonistic role in Hatching as an overbearing, abusive mother figure; a staple within the larger horror genre but with an incredible sense of modernity about her. She is a mix of mommy vlogger and pageant mom who is seeking to relive her youth through her daughter and wants to always put on the appearance of a perfectly manicured family for her audience. Obsessed with the details and maintaining an aesthetic, she dresses her cuckolded husband (Jani Volanen) and youngest son (Oiva Ollila) in matching outfits and is always craning to get the perfect angle or lighting for her vlogs. Bergholm and Rautsi go to great lengths to paint her as a vapid, absent yet overbearing force that rules over her household by instilling terror in those underneath her. This power does not bring her any real happiness at home, however, as she leads a second life with Tero (Reino Nordin), a compassionate carpenter who fills her needs. This discontent with her home life is one of the first cracks in the metaphor of the film as it begins to try and barter some sympathy for the mother despite her rancid behavior. 

The messaging is further complicated by the transforming role of the creature which imprints itself on Tinja. At the start, it acts as a symbol of a child who is captive in a home life without present parents and thus has to fill that role by themselves; feeding, cleaning, and educating themselves without the guidance of a mother. As the creature grows and becomes more violent, it takes on the role of Tinja’s bottled-up anger at her mother, and eventual jealousy as the creature lashes out at the people around her who are living an authentically happy life. While the concrete answer of what the creature exactly represents is constantly shifting and changing throughout the narrative, the design is wildly frightening. It straddles the line of being gross enough to cause fear, but its big eyes and infant-like mannerisms help us understand why Tinja goes to the lengths she does to foster the creature. 

This nightmare unfolds in an unsettling home that, while everything clearly has a place we get the idea that it is all for show and not a home where its residents are allowed to live freely. The floral wallpaper which adorns the halls drives home the feeling that everything here is meticulously arranged and curated, like a bouquet. Tinja, then, in her floral dress blends into the environment picked out, no doubt, by the matriarch and forced into compliance so that Tinja is unable to form her own identity. We see this later when she avoids a direct answer to Tero when he asks if she actually enjoys gymnastics. The doors of the home are very unique with their translucent glass panes so that we can see the menacing shadow of the creature creep and stew around in the rooms, festering against the sounds of Tinja being torn down and ridiculed by her mother and growing in an anger that Tinja herself is prone to swallow so as to not upset her mother. Couple this incredible set design with the creaking and ticking sound design – a clock, a heartbeat, the clapping strain and reverberation of a gymnastics beam being used to center the twirling girls – it is all so unsettling and digs in under the skin of the audience creating a constant itching.  

Hatching is a great entry into modern horror even though its script seems a little too ambitious at times. There is an alternate reading of this film where it is the creature that takes on a mothering role to Tinja and becomes whatever the girl needs it to be which is why its motivations seem to change so wildly. There is also a reading of this film that wholly rejects any deeper meaning, and instead it is just a creature feature packed with unnerving stalking sequences and thrilling tension. However one decides to engage with Hatching, it is an undeniably a beautiful film that will haunt with its imagery and unsettle with its sound design. Bergholm, with her art department, creates a perfect atmosphere for breeding discomfort without relying on jump scares or many of the typical cheap tricks that are over employed in modern horror, and it is an effort that should not be missed.