This child is a demon!

Towards the end of Salve Maria, the latest film by Mar Coll, the character of the mother with postpartum depression played by Laura Weissmahr went away for a few days to the Pyrenees, and there her intrusive thoughts contaminated the film with visions halfway between folk horror and a sickly tale by Mariana Enríquez. Well then, Nightborn seems to start, more or less, at that same point: a couple of new parents move to an isolated house in the heart of the Finnish forest to raise a baby with whom the mother seems unable to connect. Normal, because something strange (if not directly creepy) is happening to this creature. Or perhaps the problem lies with the mother, and the whole thing could be a brutal allegory of a maternal-filial bonding disorder.

Since director Hanna Bergholm introduces elements of Finnish folklore, such as vaihdokas (changelings), wild trolls and, in general, the conception of the forest as a territory inhabited by supernatural forces, all this discourse on maternal rejection is masked by a layer of horror cinema. And as a genre film, it is quite good: it has shocking moments, it is cheeky and it splatters, attributes that are always highly appreciated by fans of this genre. In this sense, Nightborn could also seem like an apocryphal sequel to Rosemary's Baby: its discourse aims to argue that, for some mothers, the first months after giving birth can be a living hell.