Mark Reviews Movies: FALSE POSITIVE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 24, 2021

The main point of False Positive is a feeling—a feeling of suspicion, uncertainty, and rising anxiety. A woman, who has wanted a baby for some time, finally becomes pregnant. It should be at least a little scary, of course, but as everyone seems to tell Lucy (Ilana Glazer), it should also be a joyous experience for her. Despite all of those assertions, nothing about the process, especially under the specific circumstances of Lucy's pregnancy, feels like anything approaching joy.

Beneath all of the strange happenings and dubious characters that make up this plot, there is more than a bit of truth to this movie, co-written by Glazer and director John Lee. It's not just about the apparent machinations going on behind the scenes of Lucy's pregnancy, which are either real or just a figment of her imagination—a side effect of so-called "mommy brain," as all of those people insisting that Lucy needs to smile and experience the happiness of this process also assert.

This story is also, by way of the doubts and apprehensions and misgivings, about the constant personal, professional, social, and cultural pressures of being pregnant. There might be something to the concept of "mommy brain," but maybe it has nothing to do with biology. Maybe it's just that too many people can't stop from telling Lucy how she's supposed to be experiencing, handling, and dealing with her pregnancy. It's enough to drive someone mad—or at least make it seem as that person is.

Whether or not this underlying message merges with or complements the fairly generic and predictable thriller-like elements that constitute this story, that's a different question. By the end, we know who has done what and why they have done it, in regards to Lucy's pregnancy, but to be clear, all of those answers are basically a dead end. We can reasonably assume the outcome, because Lee isn't exactly subtle in providing the clues, and the payoff is so alternately violent and strange—bloody and surreal—that the final note is one of bafflement, not tragedy.

Lucy, who works at a marketing firm, and her husband Adrian (Justin Theroux), a successful reconstructive surgeon, have been trying to have a baby for the past two years. Nothing has worked, and Lucy confides in her husband that she feels like a failure as a woman because of it. He has a solution: A former medical school teacher of his is now one of the top fertility doctors in the country and maybe the world.

All Adrian needs to do is call in a favor. After all of the disappointment and some convincing, Lucy agrees.

The doctor is John Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), a man who exudes so much easy bedside manner that we start to wonder if his smile is permanently frozen in place. After a brief examination of Lucy's "architecture," Dr. Hindle recommends some booster medications before and after artificial insemination. Soon after, Lucy is pregnant.

From there, the plot more or less amounts to the two men most intimately involved in the pregnancy—Adrian and Hindle—becoming increasingly and more invasively involved in Lucy's choices. She can sense this, of course, as well as the way that Hindle's head nurse (played by Gretchen Mol) and a member (played by Sophia Bush) of a soon-to-be-mothers support group seem to take a lot of interest in the doctor's work and her pregnancy. There's plenty of reason to be suspicious, considering a conversation Lucy thinks she overhears between her husband and the doctor before some anesthetic kicks in, the strange way Hindle seems to forget the name she's planning for the baby, and a series of sinister dreams, either born of real fear or outright paranoia.

The actual mechanics of this side of the material aren't particularly engaging or effective. Lee toys with us so often, especially with and in those nightmares, that Lucy's experiences become a bit too inexact, confounding, and distanced. One understands the instinct to play with the notion of what's real and what may be imagined, both in terms of keeping us on our toes and of reflecting Lucy's own perception (warped by all of that pressure and all of the doubts—and maybe something else). The effect, though, simply puts up a barrier, keeping the heart of the story obscured by all of the ambiguity.

That's unfortunate, because the core of this tale, heightened by Glazer's performance, does address the way that women, their bodies, and their very biology are both controlled and questioned throughout pregnancy (A renowned midwife, played by Zainab Jah, puts all of that into words, as Lucy starts to consider separating herself from Hindle's participation). There's a real specificity to the ideas presented here, even as the plot itself deals in intentional vagueness.

To its credit, False Positive is thoughtful and considerate when it directly approaches these ideas, and while the resolution of its mystery is about as routine as could be anticipated, the actual resolution of Lucy's story isn't. The movie works so hard to fool us so thoroughly, though, that all of these ideas and emotional beats lose their potential.

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