Mark Reviews Movies: HATCHING

Hatching, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 28, 2022

The girl is 12, and while she doesn't know specifically what she wants, she wants it desperately. Tinja (Siiri Solalinna), the main character of Hatching, really can't know what she wants in and from her life. So much of who she is, what she does, and why she does it rests upon her mother. She wants perfection, and the daughter will do everything she can to fulfill that, because she really, simply, and innately wants her mom to love her.

That's the core of this eerie, darkly funny, and achingly sad film, written by Ilja Rautsi and directed by Hanna Bergholm. On the surface, this is a horror story about a supernatural creature, willing to kill and capable of doing so. The origin, portrayal, and design of the monster, though, give one a sense of the film's deeper, more human intentions.

Tinja lives what appears to be a perfect life—from her family's two-story house in a quiet town, to the fancy décor and furnishings that occupy that house, to the way the family members' outfits are so coordinated, to the big smiles on their faces in the opening scene. That's the life and the look that Tinja's mother, played by Sophia Heikkilä, has created. She's an internet personality who writes a blog and makes videos about the joys of having a happy, ordinary, and perfect family, made up of herself, her husband (played by Jani Volanen), the couple's daughter, and their son Matias (Oiva Ollila). Obviously, none of that public picture is entirely or at all accurate.

One day, a crow gets into the living room, flies around the space, and knocks over some pieces of decoration, before landing on the chandelier, causing it to come crashing down on a glass table. Tinja catches the bird by throwing a blanket over it, and when she asks her mother if she should release it outside, the mother asks for the animal. Upon taking the cawing lump in the blanket into her hands, mom proceeds to snap the helpless bird's neck.

That night, Tinja hears a crying crow in the nearby woods. It's the same bird, struggling on the ground and fighting against the girl's attempts to help. After—rather brutally, because it's a persistent animal—putting the crow out of its misery, Tinja discovers a nest with a single egg inside it. Promising to take care of it, she brings the egg home and nestles it in her bed.

Anyway, the egg grows much larger, as the truth of the family, particularly the mother and her attitude about that family, becomes more and more apparent. Mom is both demanding—pushing Tinja to excel at a sport that the girl doesn't seem particularly fond of and overshadowing her husband to such an extent that he's almost like a decoration (perhaps pleasant doormat)—and uncaring—unaware of the devastated looks on her daughter's face from the constant criticism and ignoring Matias' excitement at making his mom breakfast, because he stains both of their clothes with some spilled jam. Tinja keeps forcing herself in attempts to meet her mother's impossible expectations, hoping for even a sliver of approval, admiration, or affection.

Finally, the egg, which has expanded to be about as big as Tinja, hatches, and out of it emerges a large baby crow. The thing is frightening, of course, and that's not only because it's a real, tangible thing, brought to life by some skillful puppetry and accents of subtle digital effects.

It's also because there are unnatural elements (relatively speaking, obviously, given that its entire existence is an unnatural one) to its design. Within its beak, we spot teeth, and the bird's eyes are big and blue. Looking at it with some generosity, this creature is a wretched, pathetic thing, and when it starts mimicking Tinja's physical gestures, the girl decides to care for this orphaned monster, like an actual mother would. Gradually, the bird's mimicry evolves beyond movement and into the realm of appearance. Alli, as Tinja names the bird, starts to look a lot like its adopted mother.

The rest of the story moves between tender moments, as the girl and the bird bond in their shared loneliness, and sinister humor, as the crow is somehow psychically connected to Tinja and acts out the girl's darker thoughts—irritation, anger, jealousy. A barking dog that disturbs her sleep in the night is the first to meet a grisly end, and that establishes a wickedly amusing expectation when Matias bugs his older sister.

The mother's psychologically overbearing but emotionally distant ways continue and become more difficult for Tinja to bear—particularly in one scene, during which mom treats her daughter like an adult friend, gossiping about her lover Tero (Reino Nordin), before saying that she never has truly loved anyone until meeting him. The way Solalinna, in her debut performance, smiles through the tears of that devastating confession is an especially potent moment in a generally nuanced performance.

Meanwhile, Volanen is quietly tragic as the ignored husband/father, and Nordin plays the guy-on-the-side with unexpected compassion for Tinja—until a point, obviously, when his own family is put into peril by something that looks exactly like her. Heikkailä scarily convincing as a personification of narcissistic inauthenticity, filled with self-love and apathy for everything and everyone outside of herself.

Basically, there's not only one monster in Hatching, and for that matter, the monster we clearly see might not be one at all. Nature doesn't make monsters, but nurturing—and more to the point, perhaps, the absence of it—certainly does.

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