Hatching (2022) Review

Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) is a young gymnast whose rescue of an injured bird is cut brutally short by her overbearing mother (Sophia Heikkilä). However, Tinja finds an unguarded egg while venturing into the woods and takes it home with her, caring for it as it grows. Meanwhile, there’s a competition on the horizon and the battle for the spare place on the team appears to be between Tinja and her friend Reetta (Ida Määttänen)…

The opening stanza of Hatching sets out Tinja’s outwardly impressive but inwardly brittle home life, summed up by her mother’s endless posting of social media videos championing their domestic bliss in the sickeningly branded Lovely Everyday Life vlog, when the reality for the family is a constant struggle to achieve and be perfect, especially for Tinja. The scenes in which she is pushed to train harder and harder until her hands bleed is the mother-daughter relationship in a nutshell.

This regime motivates Tinja to nurture the egg in exactly the ways her mother would find alien and initially there’s a feeling that the film will build across its whole runtime to end with the new life bursting forth from the egg.

However, with minutes the egg has developed to human size and lives up to the title shortly afterwards, leaving Tinja with the dilemma of how to continue to nurse this creature while keeping it secret from the rest of the household.

And what a creature it is, an animatronic creation odd enough to unnerve slightly but to never truly disgust, its innocent gestures and squawks tugging at the heart strings as opposed to triggering the gag reflex. The bizarre bird critter begins to transform into something else and it isn’t difficult to predict where this is going as Tinja sees something of herself in this odd being tucked away in her bedroom.

Heavy on the metaphors and with so much going on that some of the plot threads get a little lost in the push for making specific points, Hanna Bergholm’s film still has an awful lot going for it, chiefly the central performance from the remarkable Solalinna.

Much of the movie rests on her shoulders and she carries a complicated role admirably, particularly as the relationship between Tinja and the creature – named Alli after a tune which is more likely to generate shudders than smiles – crosses various lines as each seeks to protect the other.

Switching between coming of age drama, dark social commentary comedy and disturbing body horror at regular intervals, Hatching somehow manages to deal with the tonal shifts reasonably well and the pithy screenplay by Ilsa Rautsi gets in plenty of digs at competitive parenting – at one point Tinja’s mother sums up her whole rule to live by with the line “When you win, you don’t have to worry about anything”. There are also shots taken at progressive lifestyles, revealing that the mother of Tinja, for all her picture postcard YouTube clips, has an artisan companion called Tero (Reino Nordin) tucked away in the countryside.

Interestingly, although Tero is “the other man” is this situation, the tale doesn’t portray him as an awful person. In fact, he’s thoughtful, funny and kind, caring for the baby his wife did not survive the birth to see. In Tero, Tinja finds a kindred spirit and although the middle section threatens to get bogged down by the detour it informs the final act in no small way, as matters finally get out of hand and Tinja has to make crucial, lifechanging decisions.

Hatching may be overstuffed with ideas, which ultimately lessen the impact of the piece as a whole, but at the very least it’s trying to go way beyond the norm of this type of horror. Often the subtext is less than subtle but the presence of Solalinna and Heikkilä keep this one on the rails as well as a couple of startling, resolutely unsentimental gore set-pieces. Dog lovers, and that group includes me, are going to want to cover their eyes at one point. It’s a shame that the friendship between Tinja and Reetta isn’t given room to breathe but there’s a lot to pack into 86 minutes.

The allegory concerning the transformation into womanhood may be writ too obviously large here while others such as the suggestions of an eating disorder are sketchily drawn and it’s a tiny disappointment that the film doesn’t confront the thornier issues with the same brio that it lays into its easier targets. Having said that, Hatching is still a worthwhile watch which combines humour, heart and horror. It also delivers on those gross effects sequences and its parting shot is one for discussion. Overall, a fine feature debut from Hanna Bergholm.

Read Hanna Bergholm’s Horror Favourites right HERE

Movie Rating:

Trailer: