If you’ve ever looked at a picture-perfect influencer family and thought, “Something in that house is definitely decomposing emotionally,” Hatching steps in and says, “Correct—and also it’s a giant bird girl.”
Hanna Bergholm’s Hatching is a gloriously nasty little fable about perfection, performance, and puberty, dressed up in pastel Scandi décor and smeared with vomit, feathers, and blood. It’s like Black Swan, E.T. and a parenting blog were thrown into a blender and left on “possessed.”
Welcome to the House of Weaponized Happiness
Twelve-year-old Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) lives in a Finnish influencer’s fever dream. Her mother—credited simply as Mother (Sophia Heikkilä)—runs a popular blog about their perfect home, perfect kids, perfect dog, perfect baking, perfect life. The kind of account where you scroll for five seconds and immediately feel bad about your existence and your sink.
Behind the camera? It’s a horror show.
Mother is a former figure skater whose true sport now is emotional manipulation. She lives through Tinja’s gymnastics, micromanaging her routines, hair, posture, diet, and soul. Younger brother Matias is mostly around to be neglected and feral, like a small goblin with a tablet.
When a crow crashes into their pristine living room, Mother snaps its neck with the calm efficiency of someone deleting an unflattering photo and instructs Tinja to “take it out.” The way she says it? She might as well be talking about emotions. Or competition. Or inconvenient children.
Tinja later finds the crow still barely alive in the woods and mercifully finishes the job with a rock. Nearby, she finds an egg. Big, abandoned, and weird. Naturally, she does what any emotionally suppressed pre-teen under immense pressure would do: she smuggles it home and hides it like a secret. Symbolism says hi.
The Egg, the Bird, and Every Repressed Feeling Ever
Tinja incubates the egg in her room, and because this is a horror film and not a biology class, it grows to truly upsetting proportions. While the egg swells, so does Tinja’s stress:
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She discovers Mother is having an affair with handyman Tero.
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A new neighbor, Reetta, joins her gymnastics group and is annoyingly talented.
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Mother responds by “motivating” Tinja until her hands literally bleed.
All of this simmers quietly under that curated family image until the egg finally hatches… and out comes something that looks like a wet vulture crossed with a Muppet from hell.
Tinja names it Alli. Because if you’re going to secretly raise your monstrous id-baby, you might as well give it a cute name.
The beauty of Hatching is that the creature design is grotesque but pitiful. Alli isn’t born evil; she’s born needy. She limps back to Tinja, injured, craving care, covered in rags of feather and flesh. Tinja hides her under the bed, feeds her, bonds with her—nurturing something wild and unacceptable that absolutely cannot be shown on camera.
In other words: she’s raising her repressed self.
Alli: The Chaos Gremlin of Tinja’s Soul
From here, things escalate in ways that are both deeply disturbing and darkly hilarious.
Tinja is annoyed by neighbor girl Reetta’s yappy French bulldog, Roosa. She doesn’t do anything about it, because she’s a good girl. She swallows the irritation like everything else.
Alli does not have that problem.
One night, Tinja wakes to find Alli on top of her, Roosa’s decapitated corpse beside them. Tinja vomits in horror; Alli helpfully eats the vomit. It’s nurturing, in a truly disgusting “we share everything” kind of way.
As the film goes on, we learn:
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Tinja and Alli are psychically linked. Whenever Alli lashes out, Tinja convulses or seizes.
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Alli acts on Tinja’s repressed anger and jealousy—toward Roosa, toward Reetta, toward anyone who threatens her standing in Mother’s eyes.
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The more this goes on, the more human Alli becomes… specifically, the more she becomes Tinja.
Alli molting her bird features and slowly turning into a flesh-and-blood Tinja doppelgänger is both body horror and emotional metaphor. She’s the part of Tinja that wants, rages, resents. The part that isn’t polite, perfect, or photogenic.
Motherhood, Monstrosity, and a Very Bad Hair-Brushing
While Tinja is secretly raising a nightmare under her bed, Mother is busy doing her own monstrous parenting arc:
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She pushes Tinja to compete harder when Reetta outshines her.
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She moves Tinja like an accessory between the family home and Tero’s house.
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She flirts with baby Helmi (Tero’s daughter) as if test-driving a replacement child.
The affair scenes at Tero’s place are brutal in a quiet way. Tero is actually kind to Tinja, recognizing she might not even like gymnastics. Meanwhile Mother beams her influencer smile and poses as the fun, sexy girlfriend while still expecting Tinja to perform. It’s the kind of emotional whiplash that could create at least one homicidal bird girl, possibly two.
Back home, when Mother finally encounters Alli, she mistakes her for Tinja and immediately does… what she always does: fusses, criticizes, brushes her hair. Hard. So hard she injures Alli. It’s a perfect snapshot of her parenting style: damage disguised as care.
Alli understandably attacks her. At this point, honestly, no jury of viewers would convict her.
Gymnastics, Self-Sabotage, and the Death of the Good Girl
When Reetta is attacked and badly injured by Alli (hello, severed hand), Tinja’s guilt spikes. She visits Reetta in the hospital, face crumpled with the realization that her inner monster is no longer just chewing on dogs but dismantling people’s futures.
By now, Alli looks almost exactly like Tinja, save for the eyes. It’s like looking into a mirror that reflects every terrible thought you denied having.
Tinja is awarded Reetta’s competition spot—classic horror irony—and Mother is ecstatic. They go to Tero’s under the guise of a fun gymnastics weekend, leaving Helmi exposed to a creature who dines on perceived rivals and their pets. Tinja’s jealousy and fear coil together. She knows what Alli does to anything that threatens her place.
When Tinja performs her routine, she mentally sees Alli about to attack Helmi with an axe. Instead of pushing through, she deliberately messes up, falling and injuring her wrist. The psychic link snaps the scene in two: by failing, she stops Alli. It’s the first time Tinja chooses to sabotage the Perfect Daughter act to save someone else.
Of course, Mother doesn’t see sacrifice. She sees embarrassment. After Tero kicks them out—having witnessed Alli’s attempt on his baby’s life and understandably deciding he’s had enough eldritch drama—Mother blames Tinja for “ruining her happiness.” It’s honestly impressive how much emotional damage she can pack into one sentence.
Final Hatching: One Daughter In, One Daughter Out
The climax is pure tragic fairy tale.
Mother finds Alli in Tinja’s room, mistakes her again for Tinja, and injures her while brushing her hair. Alli attacks; Tinja intervenes. They chase Alli; the psychic link turns their conflict into a three-way tug-of-war.
In Tinja’s room, Mother overpowers Alli and stabs her in the leg—which also injures Tinja. The film goes full doppelgänger tragedy as Tinja steps in front of a second blow meant for Alli and is stabbed in the chest instead. She dies, collapsing over Alli, her blood pouring into the creature’s mouth.
This blood is the final ingredient.
Alli completes her transformation into Tinja’s perfect double—smooth skin, human eyes, everything. The original Tinja, the anxious, striving, traumatized girl who hatched her guilt and rage into existence, lies dead on the floor.
Alli stands. Looks at Mother. And says, simply: “Mother.”
Roll credits.
It’s a vicious ending if you think about it: the “real” Tinja, with all her complexity and inner conflict, is gone. What’s left is the pure product of all that repression and monstrous parenting: a daughter who looks perfect, says the right word, and has nothing human left inside that Mother didn’t create.
Honestly, if that’s not the most brutal satire of influencer motherhood ever put to screen, I don’t know what is.
Why Hatching Works (and Hurts So Good)
What makes Hatching such a delightfully dark watch is how precise it is:
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Body horror with purpose: Every feather, molting beak, and ripped jaw is connected to Tinja’s emotional state. It’s gross, but it never feels random.
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Satire with claws: The influencer angle isn’t just aesthetic garnish; it’s the engine of the abuse. Mother doesn’t want a child, she wants content.
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Performance: Siiri Solalinna nails both Tinja and Alli, shifting from brittle fragility to uncanny menace with small, chilling changes.
And underneath the blood, vomit, and dead dogs, there’s an uncomfortable honesty: when you force a child into a box of perfection, something ugly doesn’t disappear—it just finds a weirder way to hatch.
So yes, Hatching is bizarre. It’s mean. It’s occasionally disgusting. But it’s also sharp, sad, and very funny in that way where you laugh and then think, “Oh no, that’s a little too real.”
In the end, it’s a cautionary tale every over-curated parent should probably see: keep nursing your grudge, your denial, your brand image—and don’t be surprised if one day something crawls out of your kid that calls you “Mother” and means it as a threat.
