Every day, 12-year-old Tinja tries to please her mother who drives her relentlessly at gymnastics practice. Her mother was once a successful figure skater and is now a popular influencer who posts daily snapshots of her perfect family on her popular lifestyle blog. One night, Tinja finds a strange egg and is ready to take care of it until it hatches. But the creature growing within the shell will surprise everyone.

This Finnish film, which is a mix of body horror and coming-of-age story, is a clever example of genre cinema. The comparisons to David Cronenberg and to suburban facades as “curtains of evil” are apt. Having screened at the Sundance and several other festivals, director Hanna Bergholm’s allegorical film about parental control and the physical and psycho-emotional changes of adolescence fits neatly into Northern European nature revenge narratives. Hatching was filmed in Latvia in collaboration with Mistrus Media and a number of Latvian film professionals.