Imagine if you will a picturesque nuclear family in a cheerful suburban home of near flawless efficiency. The carpet is beige, the walls are eggshell, the fixtures are polished to a shine, and everything is placed just where it should be. As the beautiful mother and suitable father dote over their attentive children, rays of sunshine bounce off their unblemished skin and pastel clothing, creating an air of smiling contentment and loving serenity.
But the seams of this fantasy are stretched thin and can’t possibly hold forever. Soon, the ugliness of this toppling illusion’s foundation will surely be exposed for all to see, and this mockery of perfection will come crashing down upon them.
The cinematic dissection of familial “Ozzie and Harriet” myths is certainly not a new concept, but rarely is it executed with such grotesque savagery as in Finnish filmmaker Hanna Bergholm’s debut feature Hatching. Using a combination of easily-spotted metaphor and fantastically rendered creature effects, Hatching is a flight fueled by domineering parental control and violently enacted pre-teen rebellion that consistently careens into parts unknown with an impressive amount of imagination and audacity. You’ll likely have no trouble recognizing Bergholm’s sometimes on-the-nose symbolism, but I promise you’ve never seen thematic elements presented quite like this before.
Told from the viewpoint of Tinja (Siiri Solalinna), a 12-year-old girl trying her best to live up to the impossible expectations of her mother (Sophia Heikkilä), Hatching distinctly examines how children often lose their identities to those of overbearing parents. Bergholm manifests this loss in a wonderfully surreal way when Tinja begins to care for a bird egg she finds in the woods behind her house.
Hidden in her room, the egg inexplicably grows to exponential size before hatching a magnificently monstrous, gnarled, and slimy bird/human hybrid that Tinja keeps as a companion. The bond between girl and “bird” (who Tinja has named Alli) is symbiotic to say the least, and things quickly get out of hand when one becomes overprotective of the other.
As the film progresses, Bergholm has no issues leaning heavily on thriller and horror tropes, but implements them with such a subdued finesse that you almost forget they’re there. Practically speaking, Hatching is a Cronenberg-esque body horror picture (with all that implies), but the sensitivity with which Bergholm approaches her film’s central conflict allows it to breathe without being continuously unnerving, despite the nastiness of its backbone.
In doing so, she lays bare the hypocrisies possessed by the outwardly flawless, and the lasting damage they are capable of wreaking on the most vulnerable among us.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.