Womb (2025) by Bridget Smith

Director: Bridget Smith

Year: 2025

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Slasher

Plot:

Returning to her hometown, a troubled woman rents out a remote cabin in the countryside to help her deal with her addiction issues and makes friends with several neighbors to help her, but soon runs afoul of a vicious killer stealing victims from women’s wombs must stop the spree.

Review:

Overall, this was a decent enough genre effort. Most of what works here is based around the idea of the killer and what type of spree he’s set out to perform as he moves along. The general concept of this one works around the idea of a killer going around targeting women who are pregnant and about to give birth by ripping out the fetus from their womb for his own deviant thrill is a brutal, chilling concept that gives this an immensely dark edge. The series of interactions that come about at the cabin, whether it be stalking the couple of neighbors in the woods nearby, the series of chases that take place in the house where she has to protect the daughter from the hunter trying to get to her and the mother, and a constant stream of interactions that take place around the cabin where the whole thing becomes aware as to why he wants to target her and her unborn child. This is usually accomplished with a slew of effective, tense ideas and setpieces resulting in some solid enough gore to help enhance that kind of dark, grimy feel of the motive and reasoning, where everything comes together well enough.

Where this one gets a bit underwhelming and troublesome is in some of the intricacies of the storyline and how it all plays out. The main sticking point against what’s going on is the whole thing taking place in an area where a bunch of pregnant women are targeted and have their fetuses removed, as the whole thing involving a pregnant woman going out to a remote cabin without her boyfriend to protect her from that scenario is immensely difficult to make sense of. There’s a reason for that, owing to the twist which is immensely obvious and never comes close to hitting the emotional core it thinks it's hitting, mainly due to the whole thing being so short on potential suspects it’s hard to get caught off-guard by it, but the general concept of staying there in that situation the way she is makes little sense. As well, the finale makes for a troublesome bit of revelations where her inability to protect herself is the main reason for what’s going on, making for a frustrating type of events that go on, leaving this one with some issues.

Overview: ***/5

A general solid and effective psycho/thriller genre effort, this one manages to be worthwhile enough with a lot to like and only being let down by a few minor issues that are enough to hold it down. Those with an interest in this style of genre fare, who are curious about it, or who are fine with the issues on display, will want to give it a shot, while most others out there should heed caution.