Hatching (2022)

A young gymnast who tries desperately to please her demanding mother, discovers a strange egg. She hides it and keeps it warm, but when it hatches, what emerges shocks them all…. and it’s actually an excellent wet puppet at that.But the film is about more than that. It does have a very topical theme as we have been learning more and more about how manipulative social media can be and how depressing seeing the seemingly perfect lives of others can be. Well, the calculated image the family is forced to maintain by the domineering matriarch might not reflect reality, or from another point of view, living a public life brings it’s own burdens.In the first act we see the mother maintaining the branding she has cultivated for the family on her blog. While shooting more material, a blackbird smashes into the room and causes plenty of chaos before Tinja, our main character, manages to catch it. While Tinja would like to set the bird free, mother just kills it instead and instructs Tinja to get rid of it. Next night, Tinja hears the cawing of the bird, which hadn’t died after all and managed to get out of the compost bin. Tinja tries to help it, but can’t, so she ends up mercy killing it. To her dismay, she finds an egg in a nest, which she decides to care for. As it happens, it’s not just a normal egg. It begins to grow at an amazing speed before hatching into something that breaks Tinja’s routine and is the cause for much mayhem.Nothing here is subtle. You can see the ending coming miles away, but at the same time, this is a topic that needs to be talked about in the media and horror is often the right medium for discussing complicated subjects like this.The movie feels more like an opening argument than a discussion, but it also manages to not be as simplistic as it might seem early on. The parents are more complex than expected based on the first act. Not much, mind you, but there is more going on than first meets the eye.I’m not sure the movie quite hits the tone it wishes. There are some fairly comedic scenes, but I’m not sure the levity works in favor of the overall goals of the movie. Also, Tinja doesn’t get much of a chance to be funny, so in this sense she feels somewhat out of place in her family.Overall, I did like it, but I also felt that there is some amount of wasted potential. But the puppet is very cool.