The English-language debut of Finnish director Hanna Bergholm, co-written with Ilja Rautsi, Nightborn stars Seidi Haarla and Rupert Grint. They play, respectively, Saga and Jon; she is the daughter of a jet-setting doctor mother (Pirkko Saisio), and he is the son of a vicar (John Thomson, an English comedy star, here in a straight dramatic role). They move into Saga’s late grandmother’s house in the woods, vehicles rusting on the lawn and the trees full of weird whispers. When Saga gives birth to their son, he comes out strange, hairy and allergic to metals, grunting constantly, and seemingly more interested in his mother’s blood than her milk…
Nightborn is a good horror film. Pregnancy/postpartum horror is its own subgenre, going back to Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and probably long before. This does that well, although I would have liked more plot to go with it. This is an issue with modern horror, where it’s all subtext and no, well, text. I get it; horror can be/arguably is a vehicle for exploring real-world fears, but you still tend to need a story to go on top of everything. There are hints of that here, with mention of a tale-telling grandmother, Finnish myths, and the boundary between the human and natural world. Otherwise, though, it’s mostly just symbolism without a lot anchoring it. I’d have also liked a greater sense of the forest as a character, which ties back into there not being enough plot. The film is engaging and well-crafted, though.
As a woman-focused horror film, it tries to recreate the feeling of being a new mother with postpartum stress, and is good at doing so, which may affect your entertainment. The constant soundtrack of baby wailing makes you appreciate why many women break down, especially when abandoned to their children for days, weeks, months at a time. Grint’s Jon is a basically good man, but something of a dullard who never cares to listen to or understand his wife, though he thinks that he does. Saga is frequently told what a joy it is to be a mother and how important it is that she show her son empathy, even as her nipples swell and bleed with the baby’s vampiric assaults on them.
Another theme of the film, marking it as folk as well as feminist horror, is the battle between the wildwood and human dominance, Christianity and paganism. The film’s not exactly subtle about this. Jon’s dad is named Christian, which is what the baby’s meant to be, leading to the line, ‘Does he look like a Christian to you?’ Saga then impulsively names the child Kuura, the Finnish word for frost.
The couple, then, represent human religion and the natural world competing with one another. At one point Jon is baffled to find that tree roots have grown across a vegetable plot. ‘That’s nature,’ says his mother, ‘you have to fight it.’
Rating: 3/5
Leave a Reply