Don’t let the subtitles turn you off. This is one of the best theatrical horror movie releases of the year. The Hatching will stay with you, especially if you were raised by a narcissist.

Finnish freshman director Hanna Bergholm heads this chilling talk of Tinja, a 12 year old gymnast and her toxic relationship with a giant bird person and  her mother. What begins as a simple tale of hatching a mystical growing forest egg, twists into a disturbing metaphor for the traumatic metamorphosis caused by being raised by a Finnish Laura Dern. 

I really liked this film. I went in with low expectations. The trailer featured some really corny acting, and set it up as a pretty arbitrary story of raising a monster. But it really delivers on an emotional and visceral level.

You really have sympathy and pity on little Tinja as she desperately tries to makes sense of and manage forces way beyond her control. 

The themes throughout are vague enough to be interesting, but explicit enough to draw some connections. Toxic relationships, narcissism, puberty, eating disorders, and hidden lives are all themes that are explored pretty adeptly in a tight 1:27 runtime.

The writing is really good, and develops the characters very well. Some of the lines are a little on the nose, but they are still believable in the context of a family that desperately is putting up the perfect façade under the command of a raging narcissist mother.

9/10

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