When it comes to folk horror, we have been flooded as of late with some truly great gems: Midsommar, Apostle, Bring Her Back, The Witch. And then there’s Nightborn. Hopeful that the Finnish countryside setting and a dilapidated homestead would make for compelling genre fun, plus the addition of fan favorite actor Rupert Grint, my expectations were notably high. Given director Hanna Bergholm’s excellent debut Hatching, Nightborn never achieves the same thematic richness or demented, retina-burning curiosities. Where Hatching balanced disturbing creature horror with nuanced family drama, Nightborn leans heavily into shock value without offering any satisfying payoff. Extremely repetitive and cacophonous, Nightborn should have been aborted.
Nightborn follows Saga (Seidi Haarla) and her husband Jon (Grint) as they retreat to her decaying childhood home to start a family for real. What should be a new beginning quickly turns sour—shortly after conceiving a baby deep in the eerie woods around the property, a disgusting quick cut to a live birth splatters blood onto Jon’s face. The baby that emerges is a hairy, nightmarish thing, though the film stops from ever really showing the beast in full until the very end. It also avoids going over the top into campiness by taking the concept of the evil baby deathly serious. This feels like a strange choice, considering the opportunity to craft a memorable modern psycho baby B-movie to sit alongside It’s Alive.
That baby, which Saga eventually names Kuura, refuses ordinary food, craves blood, and reacts violently to sunlight. Could it hold an eerie connection with the ancient forest surrounding the house? As folklore, motherhood, and body horror collide, Saga finds herself drawn toward an increasingly primal mother/son bond while reality fractures around her. This includes, but is not limited to: Kuura wailing in nearly every scene, Saga screaming back and being gaslit every five seconds, and (naturally) everyone blaming the struggling mother for the issues.
If Saga annoys, Jon becomes increasingly incompetent and borderline laughable. He refuses to acknowledge the obvious no matter what evidence is right in front of him. Despite witnessing one horrifying event after another, he repeatedly responds with some variation of, “That doesn’t make any sense,” before carrying on as though nothing happened. Perhaps Jon is this way by design (especially given the obviousness of the helpless woman suffering from post partum depression metaphor), but that doesn’t make him any less frustrating.
Nightborn certainly commits to some grotesque imagery. From a disgustingly graphic childbirth sequence to mangled nipples, feeding frenzies, and increasingly disturbing body horror, the film never shies away from visceral effects. These often look incomplete though or shoddily executed, particularly in regard to the trees and vines. The forests filled with strangely human-shaped trees and rotting floorboards concealing something alive beneath them establish an unsettling folk horror atmosphere. Unfortunately, these are all just table setting. The fascinating premise gradually gives way to repetitive storytelling and frustrating character choices. While horror fans with a taste for the nasty may still find plenty to appreciate, Nightborn remains a disappointing step down from the director’s outstanding Hatching.
Nightborn was conceived at 2026’s Fantasia International Film Festival, and comes to Shudder on Friday, July 31st.
