Went blind to a Finnish horror film called Hatching (thought it was Hatchling, but I guess the difference is minimal). Not sure why this rated a theatrical release… but my local theater has about five three-hour-long Bollywood flicks so a Finnish flick slots right in. Just another way to fill theaters in the slim pickings that is these ongoing pandemic days.

Hatching is about a teen girl who finds an abandoned crow’s egg and brings it home to hatch. It has the bad habit of growing in size which causes only mild concern in the girl. She goes ahead and lets the thing hatch a mutant human/bird hybrid thingum that takes revenge on her behalf.

This film exists in this shadowland between creature feature and art house film, leaning more toward B horror flick. It’s… not bad? It has its moments but it creeps a bit too much and ultimately tap-dances in territory I’ve seen before. In between murders and revenge, it feels like its trying to be a big analogy for something. Maybe parental expectations? Something something puberty? The break-up of the nuclear family?

And sometimes a bird person just eats someone’s hand.

As pure horror, the bird creature starts as an oversized practical puppet that hovers between creepy and silly. Doesn’t help that the girl has the line, “I hatched it” which was unintentionally funny. Something maybe lost in translation. I was never particularly scared by the film… partly because I kept trying to analyze what the flick was trying to say, partly because it was just rather familiar.

I could have skipped the film… but at least now I can say I’ve seen a Finnish horror movie about a human/bird hybrid. Can’t say that every day. And the film has a little merit and is only borderline tedious. It’s a curiosity.

Score: 72