A high-strung aspiring gymnast, Tinja is all frayed nerves as she tries desperately to live up to the high standards of her mother, whose affection is given only when the camera is rolling. But all her mother\u2019s perfection is a fa\u00e7ade, masking a failing marriage and a torrid affair. The whiplash induced by the dissolution of her mother\u2019s carefully crafted world takes a heavy toll on Tinja, who finds an extremely strange way to deal with her swirling emotions. Checking on the dead bird\u2019s grave one day, she finds a mysterious egg in its place. Impulsively taking it home, she begins to care for the egg, keeping it warm inside one of her stuffed animals. Before long the egg hatches, and with it comes a manifestation of every repressed urge Tinja has ever felt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the metaphor of girls becoming a literal monster version of themselves during puberty is a bit on the nose, the execution \u2013 through Solalinna\u2019s masterful dual performance as both the delicate Tinja and her rabid doppelg\u00e4nger Alli \u2013 makes it work. Solalinna\u2019s wide, soulful eyes fill Tinja with sadness and wonder as she barrels through changes in her family situation that she has no say in and barely understands, while her physicality as Alli deftly manifests that feeling of not being in control of an ever-changing body as you head into your teen years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an equally stunning performance, Heikkil\u00e4 plays Tinja\u2019s mother not just as another kind of monster, but as a woman trapped in a cage of her own making. Her demands on her daughter are emotionally and physically abusive, but Heikkil\u00e4 finds empathy for how this character became the woman she is today. She\u2019s not a one-note harpy, but rather the result of cycles of the same emotional abuse. One particularly chilling scene involving a hairbrush perfectly evokes that tender feeling of having your mother brush your hair, only to have it devolve into trauma and pain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Complicating matters even further are the men. Tinja\u2019s father (Jani Volanen) is a loving parent, but clueless when it comes to Tinja\u2019s changing state and helpless when it comes to his wife\u2019s new plans for her life with her lover Tero (Reino Nordin). Neither man is presented as a cliche of masculinity; both, rather, are sensitive and empathetic portrayals of men ready to take active roles in raising their children, unfortunately caught up in a primal battle between mother and child that they don\u2019t quite understand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ilja Rautsi\u2019s script understands the war forever battled between mothers and daughters, the internal pull to be just like them and<\/em> the revulsion when it eventually happens. Rautsi understands that motherhood is hard, and that even when going into it with clear eyes, as seen through Tinja\u2019s attempt to be a better mother to this monster than her mother was to her, it can very easily go completely awry. Despite the film\u2019s more grisly aspects, it is the horror Rautsi mines from the fraught bonds mothers and daughters share that rattle and shake the depths of the psyche. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is indeed a creature feature, with stellar practical effects by animatronic designer Gustav Hoegen and special effects make-up by Conor O’Sullivan transforming human performers into the literal monster. Their work harkens back to gooey horror effects of films like Cronenberg\u2019s The Fly <\/em>or Nicolas Roeg\u2019s The Witches<\/em>, allowing the monster to feel real, and its terror all the more frightening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As gory as it is psychologically insightful, Bergholm beautifully balances body horror with the terror of teenage emotions, crafting imagery that shocks and unsettles in a setting as delicate as a velvet throw pillow. Anchored by committed performances from its two leads and truly stellar practical effects, Hatching<\/em> announces Bergholm as a bright new talent in the genre space and offers a gruesome addition to the teenage-girldom-is-hell cannon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hatching” is in theaters Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/hatching2-1024x512.jpg\")
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