Cría Siniestra

This warped fairy tale from Finland hits the ground running with a wonderful opening scene that really sets the tone.

A perfect family (husband, wife, young son and daughter) enjoys a perfect moment in the perfect living room of their perfect home.

But then, an uninvited guest makes an appearance.

Like a Poe-esque harbinger of doom, a jet black raven swoops in through an open window and destroys this idyllic tableau of domestic bliss.

And then things get really strange.

Hatching is essentially a coming-of-age story, a little like ET, if it was directed by Ari Aster instead of Steven Spielberg.

With great performances by Sophia Heikkila as the selfie-stick wielding stage mom and her long suffering daughter, played by Sirii Solalinna, this is a very promising debut feature from Hanna Bergholm.

Uncanny, unsettling and unpredictable.

Hatching (2022) is a Finnish Horror movie my wife and I caught in theatres this weekend. The storyline follows a little girl who finds a unique crow and it's egg and decides to bring the egg home and nurture it through birth. She would never guess what comes out of the egg... Meanwhile her parents are going through a divorce and there's troubles at home.

This movie is directed by Hanna Bergholm in her directorial debut and stars Sophia Heikkilä (Invisible Heroes), Jani Volanen (Rumble), Oiva Ollila and Siiri Solalinna.

The storyline for this is very creative and unique. The characters are very well cast and the mother is portrayed perfectly by Heikkilä. The little girl was a bit annoying at times, but there's so much to like about this movie. The creature evolves well over time and they use great special effects to make it happen. The feeding scenes were ultra gross and hard for me to watch. The use of sound effects were excellent and made me cringe in many scenes. There's also some really good jump scenes and sequences that make you uncomfortable. There's a lot going on in this movie.

This is a fresh entry into the horror genre that I would consider a must see. I'd score this a 7/10 and strongly recommend it.

Interesting, ambitious, creative, weird, and well-made but something just didn't sit right for me. My favorite part was the wallpaper in the girl's room. This wasn't scary but it was gross in a body horror and lots of vomit way. Overall, this was just okay.

This was quite an interesting watch. The story slhas a compelling social commentary and there are a lot of themes in this allegory that are pretty heavy to take on. It's very impressive to think that this is the first film for the director as well as the main actor who plays the lead. While most of the cast play their odd roles well, the girl who plays Tinja was so good - she really makes you feel for her.

Aside from the undertones, the horror in this film was pretty bonkers. It tows the line between ridiculous and disturbing a little shakily but you're never bored.

I overall felt like the narrative bit a little more off than it can chew in all the things it was trying to tackle but maybe the ambiguity was the point. This film didn't awe me to the level that it did others but I certainly thought it was a unique one definitely worth a watch for horror fans.

Tinja's going through a bit of trauma, after mother killed a harmless naive fauna, now her innocence is migrating, there's a change accelerating, and there's nowhere she can run, or even hyde. The transition takes a wild and angry path, leaves her screeching with a vile and angry wrath, very tricky to conceal, makes her do things not ideal, as the feathers fly, becoming a bloodbath.

The cause and effect of parenting on the blank pages of a pre-adolescence young lady who struggles to come to terms with the ever changing physical and psychological side of evolving and growing up. Brilliantly performed and presented, anything but a horror flick, unless of course, you're currently riding the wave of change yourself (or have done).