Ahead of its release on 16 September, we caught up with writer/director Hanna Bergholm to talk about new body horror Hatching.
What can you tell us about constructing the narrative of Hatching?
The whole story of Hatching started from one sentence of our screenwriter, Ilja Rautsi, and the sentence was that ‘a boy hatches a doppelganger out of an egg’, and he told me that is all he knows so far. I thought it was such a cool idea and was immediately interested. However, I told him that I really want to change the lead character into a girl because I really want to see more stories of women and girls. So, then I drew myself an egg and started to wonder, what does this one sentence mean? In Finnish ‘hatching’ also means brooding, so for me it was a story about this girl who is brooding her emotions, and the sides of her character. In Hatching, there’s also the theme of motherhood, so that came into the story, and so did the theme of growing up. All these themes and the story really started to evolve from this one sentence and all came basically from an egg.
How crucial is the mother-daughter relationship in the film?
The mother daughter relationship is really the center of this film. The story can also be seen as a growing up story, but it was very important for me and the screenwriter that the girls’ problems in our film don’t begin because she’s growing up and reaching puberty. The problems for her begin with her feeling that her mother doesn’t fully accept her as she is, so she’s trying all the time to do everything and earn her mother’s love. But I also think in the same way the mother is doing the same thing as her daughter, because the mother is an influencer, who is showing the perfect image of her family to her anonymous viewers, and maybe by doing that she is also trying desperately to gain some love from them.
I take it in turn, the casting for these roles was also crucial?
The casting of Tinja was really the most important thing for our film because it’s a young girl who has to do a very demanding double role. So, we auditioned 1200 girls all around Finland just to find her and finally we found Siiri Solalinna, who was just 12 at the time, had never acted anywhere before and she was just a natural talent and such a wonderful girl. Then we also found a professional, wonderful actor, Sophia Heikkilä, to play the role of the mother and I think she does just a perfect job in that role.
Did you take inspiration from any films with mother-daughter dynamics such as Carrie?
When we were writing the story I and the screenwriter didn’t discuss any reference films, we actively avoided talking about them because we didn’t want to mimic any other film, we wanted to make our own kind of story. Usually that’s what I do when I’m making films, I don’t use references from other films, I very much like to create my own kind of world. But of course, everything I’ve seen and everything I’ve read in many subtle ways, influenced me.
Where did you film hatching, the location looks incredible.
We shot the film in Latvia in the Riga city area where we found an amazing suburb where all the houses looked exactly alike, it was quite creepy actually. But it was just the perfect location and we also found a very beautiful, old kind of haunted house which we used for Tero’s house . So, all the locations were from Latvia and I think they were just perfect for this film.
Body horror is typically a hard subgenre to master. What makes hatching stand out?
I think in body horror it’s very crucial that all the effects look perfect and that they look good, that was also important to me. I wanted the creature in our film to be totally believable, that it’s not imagination, it’s real. So, we designed the whole look of the creature in every stage of its evolution in Finland, and then I knew that I need the best possible people to make this creature. So first when it hatches, it’s an animatronic puppet, and I googled – who is the best animatronic designer in the world? Google told me that was Gustav Hoegen, who lives in London, and has been animatronic designer for films such as Star Wars and Jurassic World and Prometheus, and he collected a wonderful team to make this amazing puppet for us. We also had special effect makeup made by Connor O’ Sullivan, who has two Oscar nominations, and has done Saving Private Ryan, The Dark Knight, the Last Duel and Game of Thrones and he also brought in a wonderful team. Then we also had some visual effects from a Belgian company YOUmedia and I think the creature that we have in this film looks very believable, and it’s due to the great teamwork of many wonderful people in our creature team.
Are you excited for horror fans to finally see the film?
I am very, very happy that Hatching will now be released in the UK and in many other countries. I really hope many horror fans go to cinemas and see the film and also tell other people to come and watch it so that we will keep cinemas and horror films alive!
Hatching is released on 16 September 2022; watch the trailer below –
Bloody Flicks 