A bad case of the baby blues turns into a gory fight for survival in Nightborn (Yön Lapsi), Finnish writer-director Hanna Bergholm’s worthy follow-up to her well-received 2022 debut, Hatching.
Like that movie, which combined horror and fantasy tropes with f***ed-up family dynamics, the director’s second feature focuses on a couple in the aftermath of their child’s birth — an already anxiety-ridden event that’s compounded many times over by the fact that their baby boy is some kind of bloodsucking abomination of nature.
Nightborn
Do not check the children.
Or is he? Part of what makes Nightborn both stomach-churning and thought-provoking is how all the crazy stuff happening is just a slightly — okay, substantially — exaggerated version of the reality so many first-time parents face. The movie’s many metaphors are certainly on the nose, which can feel a bit redundant once we get the gist of it. But Bergholm has a deft, darkly comic touch that turns classic child-rearing moments (breastfeeding, a baby’s first steps, a dinner session in a highchair) into gross-out sequences that make you want to laugh and cringe at the same time.
There’s plenty of sordid irony from the get-go as we watch expecting couple Saga (Seida Haarla) and Jon (Rupert Grint) drive down a twisting forest road toward their isolated country home, which is run-down, abandoned and ripe for plenty of horror hijinks. Saga is Finnish and Jon is British, which means they mostly communicate in English (a convenient trick to lend the film international appeal). It also means that Jon feels a bit out of place in a strange land where even stranger things start happening once they settle in.
Bergholm, who co-wrote the script with Ilja Rautsi, establishes a tone that’s both unsettling and outrageous, especially when she match-cuts from an orgasm scene to a birth scene, the baby popping out in a nasty close-up that leaves Jon drenched in blood. Things get much freakier when Saga learns that her little tot is covered in body hair, then tries to breastfeed “it” — she refuses to call it “him” — and nearly loses a nipple.
The couple has clearly created a monster. And yet, part of what makes Nightborn so fun and compelling is that they might just be overreacting to the insanity a baby brings into the life of any new parent, especially when it refuses to sleep and cries all day long. “Your boy is perfectly healthy,” a pediatrician tells them, offering scant comfort when their child, who Saga has christened with the weird mystical name of Kuura, starts precociously sitting up and eventually walking, while also developing a taste for blood.
“It just takes and takes and takes,” Saga shouts during one of her many overtired freak-outs, speaking a truth that lots of debuting mothers have to reckon with. And yet, she can’t help developing a growing attachment to Kuura, especially when it comes to their mutual attraction to the spooky forest surrounding their abode. It turns out Saga has much more in common with her monster baby then she thinks. Meanwhile, Jon finds himself in the same position as so many dads who, at some point, realize they’re a bit of a third wheel beside the inseparable duo of mother and child.
The director cleverly dishes out these double meanings from start to finish, fusing the parental experience with tons of gore, hysteria, visual gags and occasional jump scares. A particular standout is a “here comes the airplane” feeding scene that completely flies off the rails, revealing to what extent the happy household has been turned upside-down.
There are a few other freakish laugh-out-loud moments, although there are also times when the metaphor Bergholm keeps hammering into our skulls becomes repetitive. Her sense of humor is what often saves the day, with stars Haarla (Compartment No. 6) and Grint (who played Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films) truly unafraid to do some batshit crazy things on screen, including fighting at one point over their baby’s blood snack.
The craft level of Nightborn is also a plus, whether it’s the fairytale-like lensing of Pietari Peltola, the creepy living spaces of Kari Kankaanpää’s sets, or the combination of puppets and CGI that turn Kuura into a wicked little cutie whom we hardly ever see in the daylight.
In fact, it’s never fully clear what kind of creature the baby even is: a vampire? A troll? A killer garden gnome? But that also seems to be the point. Kuura is every new parent’s fear wrapped into one tiny package — wailing day and night, refusing to eat or sleep, making you want to rethink your family planning and reach for that box of contraceptives.
