Hatching (2022)

When you boil it down to the core of the premise, Hatching is a film about a young girl who finds an egg and looks after it until it hatches, hence the title. It's not really about that at all though. If we make use of the bird-related imagery, it's a reminder of how parents can stop their children from flying high by spending so much of their time plucking one feather after another from their developing wings. It's about the repercussions of a strained and damaged family home. It's a look at a parent really harming their child, probably without even realising what scars they are causing.

Siiri Solalinna plays Tinja, a young girl who is driven to do well in gymnastics by her mother (Sophia Heikkilä). When not hyper-focused on driving her daughter to do better, Mother is busy getting distant from Father (Jani Volanen) as she starts a relationship with Tero (Reino Nordin). Meanwhile, Tinja has to put up with a typically pesky younger brother (Matias, played by Oiva Ollila), a new neighbour who might get her spot on the gymnastic team (Reetta, played by Ida Määttänen), and whatever will come out of the egg that she found near her home.

The directorial feature debut of Hanna Bergholm, helped in developing the idea into screenplay form by Ilja Rautsi, Hatching is a finely-choreographed dance between reality and something fantastical. There's no denying the pain that some of the characters go through (whether it's physical or, in the case of Tinja, both physical and emotional), but hope springs eternal when watching something this transformative happen to someone who might just be able to survive and come out of the other end intact. They'll be irrevocably changed, but they'll have survived. As the third act starts to unfold, however, it becomes increasingly clear that nobody is guaranteed to survive this experience.

Solalinna gives a flawless performance, and also takes on one other role later in the film. She's gripping in the lead role, consistently vulnerable and naive even as she tries to lie and scheme her way through enough time to let the egg hatch, and to help grow whatever comes out of it. Both Ollila and Määttänen are very believable as the other main children onscreen, and Nordin and Heikkilä are excellent as adults who treat our young lead in very different ways. Volanen has a lot less to do, but he's good enough in his sidelined role.

Hatching works on a completely superficial level. It's interesting, it's tense, it's occasionally absolutely wild. It also works brilliantly with everything going on just below the surface (well, technically, still on the surface, but parallel to the more standard horror genre moments). I'm not sure how it will play to those who have been guilty of some of the bad parenting on display (just FYI, my own bad parenting was a whole other kind of bad parenting, mainly revolving around absenteeism and a phase of arrested emotional development, before anyone assumes I am being a pot talking to some kettles), but it's certainly works as a reminder of just how important every single decision and act is when it directly impacts children trying to hold on to their ability to fly.

8/10

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