Hatch­ing

Twelve-year-old Tin­ja (Siiri Solalin­na) is a young gym­nast tire­less­ly train­ing for an upcom­ing com­pe­ti­tion, but is most­ly des­per­ate to appease the impos­si­bly high expec­ta­tions placed on her by her per­fec­tion­ist moth­er (Sophia Heikkilä). Her moth­er is an unhinged lifestyle influencer/​vlogger who is com­i­cal­ly irre­deemable and turns their pas­tel-coloured abode into a man­u­fac­tured nest for AV content. 

Nau­se­at­ing bright hues and flo­ral wall­pa­per coats the ster­ile inte­ri­ors of their sub­ur­ban fairy tale home, exud­ing a men­ac­ing and sin­is­ter aura aligned with the matriarch’s aggres­sive­ly fem­i­nine, idyl­lic impres­sion of Finnish mid­dle-class arti­fice. Any and every moment is up for grabs by her cam­era, as she cap­tures a vapid­ly upbeat and pompous façade that is stark­ly at odds with the real­i­ty of her dys­func­tion­al family. 

These moments of acer­bic satire on online cul­ture and ​“shar­ent­ing” (a genre of par­ent vlogs that heav­i­ly relies on film­ing and shar­ing details about one’s uncon­sent­ing chil­dren) are aid­ed by the fact that as view­ers, we are not privy to her audi­ence. Is she an influ­encer per­form­ing for a size­able fol­low­ing, or just a deranged woman obsessed with pro­ject­ing a fan­ta­sy of her ide­al life?

When a wound­ed crow barges through their liv­ing room win­dow, knock­ing over some tchotchkes and smash­ing a framed fam­i­ly self­ie before caus­ing the chan­de­lier to come crash­ing down on a glass cof­fee table, Tinja’s moth­er puts it out of its mis­ery by snap­ping its neck. That same evening, Tin­ja hears a crow cry­ing in the near­by woods. She inves­ti­gates, and dis­cov­ers a nest with a sin­gle egg in it. She brings the egg to her bed­room, and kick­starts a Jun­gian nar­ra­tive of frac­tured identity.

Tin­ja projects her long­ing for ten­der­ness, nur­ture and moth­er­ly love onto this strange egg, which grows con­cern­ing­ly large before hatch­ing into a grotesque, man­gled bird crea­ture that looks like a slimy cousin of the Skek­sis from The Dark Crys­tal. The auda­cious spec­tre of the crea­ture is true stom­ach-churn­ing night­mare fuel, and the clever fusion of bril­liant Jim Hen­son-esque prac­ti­cal effects and incred­i­ble pup­petry with dig­i­tal enhance­ments will pro­vide hor­ror enthu­si­asts with a feast of genre delights. 

Ani­ma­tron­ic work is always a wel­come breath of fresh air with­in a genre over­stuffed with CGI. The crea­ture, whom Tin­ja names Alli, grad­u­al­ly sheds its bird-like fea­tures and morphs into some­thing strange and sym­bol­ic. Siiri Solalin­na gives a spell­bind­ing per­for­mance imbued by an intense­ly detailed phys­i­cal­i­ty. While Alli feeds on Tinja’s lit­er­al vom­it and tears, it is at the same time, offer­ing her solace from the trau­ma inflict­ed upon her by her mother. 

Although this cen­tral metaphor is per­haps thin and over­wrought, direc­tor Han­na Bergholm’s approach is nuanced enough to let the plot move beyond it, rather than have it cement­ed as a cen­tral dri­ving force. Styl­is­tic absur­di­ty, on-the-nose satire, delight­ful gore and rumi­na­tions on the abject mon­strous fem­i­nine pro­vide a great for­mu­la that ele­vates Hatch­ing, while the out­stand­ing cam­era work, light­ing, detailed pro­duc­tion design and sharp edit­ing make the film all the more impressive.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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