12-year-old Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) finds an egg that seems to belong to a bird that her mother (Sophia Heikkilä) killed; when it hatches, a creature emerges that turns into Tinja’s doppelgänger. There are times when director Hanna Bergholm’s feature debut makes you think about E.T. as Tinja tries to hide the ugly creature in a closet, but the relationship between girl and monster soon takes on an increasingly disturbing nature. The film works as a satire on the influencer lifestyle (represented by the horribly narcissistic mother), social commentary and body horror, with grotesque ingredients in the shape of puppets and masks created by prominent Hollywood talents.
2022-Finland-Sweden. 86 min. Color. Produced by Mika Ritalahti, Nico Ritalahti, Nima Yousefi. Directed by Hanna Bergholm. Screenplay: Ilja Rautsi. Cast: Siiri Solalinna (Tinja/Alli), Sophia Heikkilä (Mother), Reino Nordin (Tero), Jani Volanen, Saija Lentonen, Oiva Ollila.
Trivia: Original title: Pahanhautoja.
Last word: “Screenwriter Ilja Rautsi had this idea from the start. He had this one sentence in mind: ‘A girl hatches an evil doppelganger out of an egg.’ Although originally, it was a boy. It was already there, and then we started to think: ‘Okay, when it hatches, it needs to be something else.’ It’s a child, a pet, a friend, then maybe just her mirror image. When Tinja takes care of this hideous, disabled creature and loves it as it is, the creature starts to evolve. When she rejects it, tells it to go away, it changes again. Love makes you whole, and rejection breaks you.” (Bergholm, Cineuropa)
