‘Nightborn’ Berlinale Review: A Folk Horror Take on First-Time Motherhood
Dreaming of a perfect family life, Saga and her husband Jon move to her childhood home in a remote Finnish forest—only for Saga to become convinced that something is terribly wrong with their newborn baby.
Complicated motherhood has become a recurring theme in contemporary horror and its many offshoots. Films like Nightbitch, starring Amy Adams, or the more recent If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, with Rose Byrne, place the suffering, depression, and psychological fragility of new mothers front and center. The Finnish co-production Nightborn revisits many of these ideas and blends them with classic Nordic folklore, resulting in something like a folk horror film about a child who seems more connected to the creatures of nature than to anything human.
Saga (Seidi Haarla) brings her British husband Jon (Rupert Grint—the now grown-up Ron from the Harry Potter films) to a decaying house deep in the Finnish countryside where she spent her childhood. The place is falling apart—there are even plants growing indoors—but they’re convinced they can fix it up and raise not one but three children there. From the outset, it’s clear the surrounding forest is alive, breathing, almost watchful, the trees seemingly tracking their every move. Their response? Having sex beneath one of these looming “ents” (sorry—trees), which leads, nine months later, to the birth of their first child.
Needless to say, the baby isn’t exactly conventional. Director Hanna Bergholm keeps it mostly out of sight for much of the film, but judging by everyone’s reactions, there’s something off: it’s unusually large, unnervingly hairy, and cries nonstop—a guttural growl more than a wail. It barely sleeps, and Saga’s attempts to feed it are futile; the baby bites her and seems far more interested in the blood from the wound than in milk. Little by little, Saga begins to lose her patience, her grip on reality, and eventually her mind. Jon tries to keep things grounded, but it’s obvious they’re no longer on the same page—and the strain begins to fracture their relationship as well.
The filmmaker behind Hatching quickly steers this tale into more traditional horror territory. While the story incorporates themes closer to psychological drama—postpartum depression among them—the film ultimately veers toward something far more savage and visceral. Saga’s mother is no help, social pressures only deepen her distress, and her growing conviction that her child isn’t normal—whatever anyone else says—pushes her toward breaking point. The solutions she comes up with occasionally work, though no pediatrician in their right mind would recommend them.
Yön Lapsi—the film’s original title—is blunt, brutal, and not especially subtle. One of the script’s smartest choices is not to over-explain the mythologies surrounding the situation, whether tied to nature, the trees, or whatever connection the child may have to them. Religion is handled similarly: Jon’s father is a priest, and it’s clear those worlds don’t quite align. Bergholm deploys these elements less as answers than as narrative devices, genre cues meant to draw viewers into what feels like a horror film—even as her real interests lie elsewhere.
The result sits somewhere between classical horror and what’s now often labeled “elevated horror,” with an obvious nod to Rosemary’s Baby—right down to its use of offscreen space. Its selection for the official competition at the Berlin International Film Festival might suggest a more austere or high-minded work than it really is, but Nightborn never stops being a dark, slightly odd, occasionally even funny take on the perils of first-time motherhood. One thing’s for sure: they won’t be having three kids after all.
