However,  it’s Sophia Heikkilä who leaves the deepest chill. Her performance as Mother crackles with quiet cruelty, made all the more disturbing by how quickly she shifts from warm and nurturing to cold and unhinged. As seen in the opening scene, the character beams into a camera, curating a sun-drenched fantasy of family bliss for her lifestyle vlog, but then, moments later, she snaps a wild bird’s neck without hesitation because it broke her knick-knacks. Mother doesn’t flinch, doesn’t soften, just hands the body to her daughter and tells her to throw it in the garbage. That moment sets the tone: beneath every smile, a threat. The supporting cast rounds out the family with believable, repressed dysfunction, and the production design is deliberate, polished, and soaked in metaphor.

Show, Don’t Tell

The cinematography plays a crucial role in separating illusion from reality. Scenes shot through Mother’s camera lens glow with warm lighting, soft angles, and gently tinted pastels, as well as showing off her expensive, tasteful decor arranged just so. Every frame whispers of perfection, as if the house itself performs for the invisible audience, too. In stark contrast, the rest of the film confronts viewers with unforgiving clarity. Lighting becomes colder, angles can be harsh and sometimes terrifying, and scenes shot in the home are arranged to look dull and claustrophobic. This duality visually reflects the split between the world Mother presents and the world Tinja actually inhabits. The score hums beneath it all, minimal, but unsettling, and atmospheric. The animatronic puppet of Ali’s bird form is genuinely upsetting, and as the transformation begins, the grotesque practical effects are stomach-turning. 

The Evil in the Contrast

While Bergholm and Rautsi could have taken the easy and more obvious route, Ali is so much more than simply an evil doppelganger; to suggest so would be a negligent oversimplification of the psychological metaphors at work. Hatching succeeds as both a visceral body horror and a sharp psychological fairy tale, peeling back the glossy veneer of perfection to expose raw reality. Every element from the unsettling creature design to the contrasting cinematography works in tandem to explore identity, repression, and motherhood. It’s a film that creeps under the skin slowly, lingering long after the final scene. Disturbing and tragic, Hatching delivers its message with eerie precision.

Stream Hatching on Hulu or Tubi streaming services.