Director: Hanna Bergholm
Year: 2026
Country: Finland/United Kingdom/Lithuania/France
Alternate Titles: Yön lapsi
Genre: Psychological
Plot:
After the birth of their son, a woman and her husband try to deal with the responsibilities of raising him, and a series of intrusive family members also chime in on the situation, putting her in such a stressed-out state that she fails to realize the growing supernatural force after her.
Review:
Overall, this was a really effective and genuinely chilling genre effort. A lot of the film's effectiveness rests on the idea of how she's affected by the birth of the child and her downward emotional spiral after being around him as long as she is. The series of clues we get here that something isn't right starts immediately, featuring the series of bizarre interactions at the hospital when they're presented with the baby for the first time or when they get home, which features others giving the unsolicited advice that makes her feel inadequate and a failure, serves to get this started nicely and makes her unhinged and unbalanced. There's a further fun series of escalations that come about here to denote the inability to grasp the situation fully, whether it's her inability to recognize how damaging her son's vicious behavior and unnatural tone are, which makes her think that he's fine and that the whole thing rests on her shoulders to keep him alive.
This comes off rather nicely as the film continues, making the baby responsible for her deteriorating status. Trying to maintain him and deal with his every need at the expense of dealing with her husband, her friends, or other family members trying to help her, the burgeoning idea here is based on how her handling of the child is done to damage her instead. That comes about with the grievous bodily harm being done to her through attempting to feed him but forgoing help when she really should, looking at the world around her as being wrong and taking on the care of the baby herself, or just flat-out snapping at others to be the one that would try to offer help or advice as a means of helping her whenever it starts screaming or yelling uncontrollably, helping to make her psychological breakdown feel all the more earned and worthwhile as it goes along. As a whole, these all make for a great time with this one.
There are a few drawbacks here that bring this one down. The main issue here is the utterly infuriating nature of everyone around them failing to realize the obvious and intervene in what’s going on, to the point where it might feel difficult to sympathize with her over what’s going on. That she’s haggard, disheveled, lacking care of herself in terms of physical appearance and hygiene, and generally being so sluggish that it’s hard to believe she’s taking care of herself, in continuous interactions with her friends and family, that it’s hard to believe no one managed to interject themselves to ensure she’s taking care of herself or the infant. Since the thing constantly cries and screams with little discipline to contain it, it only furthers the idea that no one stepping in is a bit far-fetched, making this more frustrating as it goes along. With that also leading to a strained and unnatural relationship between her and her husband that leaves it hard to get as invested in this over time, with them involved in this unpleasant and argumentative relationship, which manages to hold this back overall.
Overview: ****/5
A really effective and likable genre effort, there’s plenty of worthwhile factors to this one that manage to keep it fun enough against its series of flaws that hold it down. Those with an interest in this approach or who are curious about the subject matter will have plenty of worthwhile points to like here, while most others out there should heed caution.
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