Hanna Bergholm’s Nightborn marries the folk horror of Avery Crounse’s Eyes of Fire with the newborn terror of Rosemary’s Baby and the reality-melting of Darren Aronofsky’s mother! While the film feels thematically similar to dozens of films we’ve previously seen, the performances enrich the script, co-written by Bergholm and Ilja Rautsi, with a coarse emotional texture. It’s equal parts beautiful, introspective, and hypnotically strange. Nightborn nestles comfortably next to modern treasures such as Valdimar Jóhannsson’s Lamb and Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre, carrying a blistering edge on human nature, desperation, solitude, and parenthood.
Saga (Seidi Haarla) and Jon (Rupert Grint) desperately want a child more than anything else in the whole world. When they move out to Saga’s childhood home deep in the Finnish forest, the couple sexually reconnect in the woods around their quaint cabin. It’s a carnal, almost ritualistic act that unlocks something primal inside the fetus that quickly begins growing inside of Saga. But neither she nor Jon suspect anything is wrong until nine long months later. After giving birth, Saga questions the identity of her newborn son. She grows cold, distant, and uncaring toward him. Busy working, Jon doesn’t see what Saga sees and believes she’s suffering from extreme postpartum depression. Bergholm wraps this real-life horror into the story to make even the audience question what is actually going on—is it all in Saga’s head, or has Jon gaslit her into believing that what’s happening is just caused by misfiring hormones?
One afternoon, the couple discover a tree growing out of the floor. It’s a bizarre occurrence that could be related to their son’s oddball behavior, or at least, Saga thinks so. As reality further bends with witchy magic, Nightborn doesn’t shy away from getting totally zany with its story. It’s that boldness that makes the film cut through the static noise of a sea of identical stories and offers a fresh perspective not only on motherhood but also on the interconnectivity of human birth with Mother Nature.
Hanna Bergholm shoots and directs the film with hyper-focus on Grint and Haarla’s chemical intensity. Their performances scrape the back of the brain. Haarla is particularly nerve-shredding in her portrayal of a madwoman on the precipice of a complete mental breakdown. And she offers great nuance to the role, allowing the viewer to feel all the pain, range, and regret throbbing in her neck. Nightborn is best characterized as a classic slow burn, until it’s not. Bergholm unleashes hell when the time is just right, and it’s well worth the character build.
Nightborn serves as a welcome addition to the folk horror arena. It’s an astute study on folk horror history with a more modern bite. With its commentary on the very rudimentary nature of human existence, the film leaves no stone unturned, and in fact, it opens up the world to an even grander examination of life.
Nightborn is now streaming on Shudder.
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