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The Exquisite Eerieness of Bird Horrors Part II: ‘Hatching’
Exploring further the themes of Bird Horrors in Hanna Bergholm’s unusual, deliciously gory, coming-of-age creature feature
This is the second installment of a three-part series. Read the first entry here.
Birds ruin everything. Hanna Bergholm’s 2022 feature debut, Hatching, makes that clear right at the start. In the opening scene, her camera glides over an idyllic Finnish suburb to the sound of an eerie yet serene humming, accompanying the view of peaceful homes and the artificially created “happy scenes” of an ordinary family. Nothing interrupts tranquillity quite like the intrusive caw of a crow — with which Hatching’s opening credits end to set an ominous tone from the get-go.
The crow in question gets into the home of Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) — a shy, 12-year-old gymnast — and her family, wreaking havoc on the stylish and sumptuous furniture the girl’s control-freak mother (Sophia Heikkila), aiti in Finnish, carefully assembled for their home — or more importantly, for her popular vlog named Lovely Everyday Life. When Tinja catches the bird, aiti asks her to bring it over and smiles while she snaps its neck like a pretzel. Then, she orders her daughter to dump it in the trash outside. The poor thing isn’t dead, though. That night, it begins shrieking in pain, and Tinja follows its voice to the nearby woods to ease and eventually end its suffering. Upon discovering the bird’s nest, she returns home with an egg that she gently nurtures and pays the type of care her mother is incapable of giving her.
Of the three movies I cover in this series, Hatching is the most obvious Bird Horror. The title kinda gives it away, but judging by the first ten minutes I described above, you likely have at least a vague idea of what to expect here. But instead of merely being a typical creature feature with dazzling practical effects, Bergholm turns her horror into a collection of coming-of-age traumas, piercing metaphors, and psychological ambiguity.
As Tinja carefully protects and hatches the egg, she also discovers that her mother is having an affair with the handyman who comes by to repair what the bird ruined. Instead of denying, however, aiti confides…
