Notable Cast: Seidi Haarla, Rupert Grint, Pamela Tola,
Pirkko Saisio
To this day, motherhood remains one of horror's most fertile
concepts. Whether it leans into the body horror of it all, the psychological
terror, or just some of the experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and the years
after raising a child, motherhood just remains one of the best cinematic ways
to link a human experience with horror. Becoming a mother fully encapsulates
the physical, mental, moral, and social expectations placed on women. Each
aspect has its own story and can go horrifically awry, and combining them all
into one? Oof. And that’s just reality. That’s not even a movie.
Finnish writer and director Hanna Bergholm focused on the
relationships between mother and daughter in her debut feature-length horror
film, Hatching, which managed to craft a creature feature (complete with
incredible creature designs and special effects) from a relationship drama told
from a young girl’s perspective on her relationship with her mother and the
roles they play.
For her follow-up, Bergholm aims for similar territory, but from the mother’s perspective. Nightborn, originally titled Yön lapsi, aims to dissect and showcase the horrors of motherhood with a slight folk-horror angle, but never loses sight of its bigger messages around its main character, and adds slick dark humor throughout. It’s a wildly strong union that feels distinctive to the director and its perspective, with incredible production design choices, but it rings true universally in its lens on motherhood.
Seidi Haarla plays Saga, who has seemingly found the start of a perfect life. She’s married, happily, to her husband, Jon - played by Rupert Grint - and they have just come to renovate her childhood home on the outskirts of a massive forest. When she gets pregnant, it’s just what they wanted. A house, even with its massive renovations, will become a home with the child, and life couldn’t be better.
However, when their son is born, he’s not quite what they
expected. His shrill cries, his relatively hairy body, and his needs are not
quite like those of other children. As Saga struggles to balance her child's
needs with her own as a stay-at-home mom, she starts to suspect the child might
be consuming her entirely.
Like so many motherhood horror flicks, the film is anchored
by the mother character. As the film's weight-bearing structure, Seidi Haarla
absolutely shines in Nightborn, delving into the nuance of a character
who, by the end of her arc, breaks down into a more naturalistic, animalistic
state. She also has a solid secondary cast to play off of, including Rupert
Grint, who is becoming quite the genre actor lately, but she punctuates so many
of the bigger ideas with a humanity that makes it feel grounded. When there are
some wild moments that teeter on the edge of cascading into the uncanny valley,
she adds so much by being the fulcrum in balancing all of the tones together.
It’s one of those performances that, without it, the film could have easily
collapsed under its own weight, and that’s what she needs to be given credit
first and foremost.
With Haarla as the foundation, Nightborn can really
build out the world around her through its plotting and narrative. Bergholm
showed a knack for blending the fantastical with reality through human
interactions and emotional constructs in her first film, and she pulls it off
again, if not to a greater effect. The film’s setting, a house on the edge of a
forest, blends this natural ambiance with human elements and lets them compete
against one another. The forest initially overruns their house, with plants and
trees growing inside, and when they arrive, they immediately try to push nature
out through renovations to create the home they envision for their family.
Instead of accepting the “home” as it is, they force it to be what they want it
to be.
It’s a perfect metaphor for what is happening with Saga and his child. Just like the house, when their child arrives, initially named Christian, but supplanted by the name Kuura in one of the movie’s best moments during their baby reveal party, the child isn't what they expected. Both parents push back, and Bergholm smartly keeps the child feeling almost like an artifice (visually, it's presented as a puppet and creepily hidden in shadows) that feels unnatural in their world as they try to force the kid to fit their own viewpoint. As Saga starts to accept who she is as a mother, and accepts her child for who he is, the fantastical elements bleed further into her world. This allows the production values to work in fascinating ways through its settings and how baby Kuura is shown, which nicely juxtaposes its themes.
There’s a folk horror element to it all, particularly through some of the ‘lore’ (I use that term very lightly for the backstory) around Saga and her sister’s childhood and how their mother interacts with them, which feels very Finnish in its cultural aspects, but the tones are universal. The dark humor (the fate of an automatic lawn mower had me openly laugh) works to get the fantastical tones to feel addressed without blatantly addressing them, and it allows the horrors of its ideas to feel more like how nature will always fight for its existence, particularly from human arrogance and control, and it uses this motherhood allegory to tell that story for its audience.
As with Hatching, Bergholm also weaves in some great
effects that touch on the uncanny but never feel too slighted. Some
occasionally patchy CGI or puppetry feel at home in the tones that she is
creating here, so that when there are elements of body horror (breastfeeding
feels absolutely torturous here) they aren’t abrasive against its larger
themes.
And yet, with all that, the icing on the cake is that,
through all its darkness, combative human emotions, and journeys into horrific
corners as its characters battle their own expectations and, eventually, each
other, the film ends with an incredibly positive outlook and tone. Not to give
too much away, but the way that Bergholm pulls off that roller coaster ride of
emotional resonance for its final moments is one of the best endings in cinema
for the year for me. It hits hard for parents, especially those who saw
parenthood as something other than it is, and still shows the beauty of that
struggle and strife.
Don’t skip out on Nightborn. It’s an oddity, sure,
especially as Bergholm keeps pulling off a tone and auteur style that feels
distinct, blending fantasy, horror, and human familial drama into one movie.
Yet, with its stellar lead performance, blissfully effective dark humor, and a
universal message about motherhood, this film ought to find far more love with
those who look for it. Don’t push back against what something is, film or
person; instead, embrace what it adds to the world.
It’s a helluva message to nail down.
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