NIGHTBORN (2026)

Studio:   Shudder
Director: Hanna Bergholm
Writer:   Ilja Rautsi, Hanna Bergholm
Producer: Daniel Kuitunen, Noemie Devide
Stars:    Seidi Haarla, Rupert Grint, Pamela Tola, Pirkko Saisio, Rebecca Lacey, John Thomson

Review Score:

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Summary:

Trying to start a family in a remote house deep in a strange Finnish forest, an unsettled mother begins to suspect her newborn child might not be normal.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

As part of their plan to start a family together, Englishman Jon and his Finnish wife Saga move into a dilapidated old house that belonged to Saga’s grandmother deep in a remote Finnish forest. Among rotting wooden floors and other fixtures in desperate need of renovation, the couple finds a tree growing through the floor of a room they plan to turn into a nursery.

While exploring the surrounding forest together, Jon notices multiple trees twisted into humanlike shapes. He and Saga have passionate sex beneath one of the strange trees, leading to Saga becoming pregnant.

Saga gives birth to a boy. Although Jon downplays their son’s peculiar features and behavior, Saga is distressed to discover the infant is unusually hairy, breathes heavily, has yellow nails, cries constantly, hates sunlight, and painfully gnaws her nipple when breastfeeding.

Saga’s disapproving mother, who expresses disappointment in her daughter’s plan to take five years off to raise a family, visits Saga along with Saga’s sister Taru and Taru’s young daughter Anna. A gruesome moment occurs when the baby yanks an earring out of Saga’s mother’s earlobe. Saga confides in her mother that she thinks something may be wrong with her child.

Saga and Jon host a party for family and friends to celebrate their new baby. Saga grows uncomfortable when she sees a young child repulsed by her newborn’s appearance. Saga also notices that the perpetually fussy baby seems to calm whenever he is in darkness or soothed by groaning breezes from the forest.

In front of their guests, Saga surprises Jon by suddenly announcing that the boy will be named Kuura, even though she and Jon previously agreed to name him Christian after Jon’s father. A conversation about the spontaneous name change causes Saga to accuse her husband of acting differently toward her since the boy’s birth. Saga also tells Jon she thinks there is something wrong with the baby, whom she repeatedly refers to as “it.”

While cleaning up the yard with Jon, Taru mentions that her grandmother cryptically said she kept rusty junk around because “cold iron burns them.” Meanwhile, a hairy hump starts forming on the back of Saga’s neck.

In the middle of the night, Saga finds Kuura out of his crib, staring at a new tree sprouting through the floor where the previous one was removed. Taking a phone call from her mother at the same time, Saga asks if her grandmother ever said anything about the forest being dangerous. Saga’s mother vaguely recalls something about entities lurking in the woods.

Saga tears through the rotting floorboard fascinating the baby to expose the tree’s roots. Something seemingly pulls at Saga and she falls unconscious. After Jon wakes her, he is surprised to find the new tree growing through the nursery floor. Saga tells him Kuura was calling to the tree. Jon suggests getting professional help for Saga.

Saga cuts herself while feeding Kuura. Kuura hungrily licks up Saga’s dripped blood.

Jon and Saga take Kuura for a routine medical exam. Saga identifies the baby as a problem, but Jon and the nurse disagree, and suggest Saga might be having difficulty adjusting to motherhood. Saga later declares she will no longer breastfeed the baby, leading to another argument with Jon.

Jon’s father Christian, who is a priest, and Jon’s mother visit the house to baptize Kuura. Jon’s mother mentions to Saga that she heard a local legend that if children aren’t blessed, trolls will take them, and some families supposedly still have troll blood running through their veins.

John is confused by massive tree roots disrupting the gardens outside. Saga laughs maniacally following a startling incident where Kuura’s hand burns on a cold fireplace poker made of iron.

Because the baby keeps biting her breast, Saga secretly starts satiating Kuura with cow’s blood. Saga hides a supply of the blood beneath the carpet concealing the growing tree.

Jon drives off upset upon learning his wife never made an appointment to see someone about her mental health. While asleep, Saga has a nightmare of tree roots enveloping the house. Saga wakes with a bloody bite wound on her arm. Kuura begins waddling toward her menacingly. Saga wards off the baby with the iron fireplace poker.

Saga’s mother calls again. Saga tells her mother she feels like killing Kuura. Saga’s mother relates by saying she felt the same way about Saga when Saga was a child.

Saga inexplicably finds herself outside on the snowy forest floor. Nearby, Saga sees Kuura gnawing on a dead rabbit.

Having discovered the stash of animal blood packets, Jon confronts Saga. Saga insists Kuura won’t drink milk, and if she does not give blood to the baby, Kuura will suck it out of her.

Jon recommends that Saga go into the city to spend time with her former work colleagues. At a restaurant dinner with the group, Saga is distracted by a crying baby. Seeing a rash starting to spread across her body, Saga abruptly rushes back home. The rash recedes once Saga reunites with Kuura. Saga feeds Kuura raw meat she stole from the restaurant.

Saga overhears Jon confiding in Taru about Saga’s worrisome behavior. When the sisters speak between themselves, Taru insists there is nothing wrong with Kuura and angrily accuses Saga of smothering her family with selfish behavior.

While the two sisters argue, Kuura viciously bites off part of his cousin Anna’s finger. Saga has an emotional breakdown as Jon and Taru rush the little girl to the hospital.

Saga continues feeding raw meat to Kuura, and she begins eating it herself too. Becoming more resigned to the situation, Saga also bonds with the boy by playing games where she pretends to be feral with him. With several months having passed since the boy’s birth, Jon is stunned to find Saga and Kuura sleeping together in the hole in the floor where the tree grows.

Having reached a breaking point with Saga’s behavior and the boy’s unusual upbringing, Jon declares he and Saga are going to raise Kuura more strictly. However, Kuura refuses to eat regular baby food. Saga throws a fit, insisting that human food hurts Kuura. Jon screams for Saga to stop indulging in fantasies. Saga serves raw meet to the child as she screams at Jon to let Kuura feed.

Once their tempers settle, Jon tells Saga she shouldn’t have been a mother, claiming her incapacity for love turned her into a monster. A struggle breaks out over the baby as Jon threatens to take Kuura away from Saga. Growing upset, Kuura cries and raises his arms. Both parents are stunned to see tree branches and roots spontaneously grow to break into the room. One of the branches impales Jon, killing him. Kuura begins feeding on Jon’s flesh. Saga joins Kuura by biting into Jon’s heart. Saga and Kuura start eating Jon’s corpse together.

A growling noise is heard outside in the forest. Kuura eagerly runs toward a humanoid figure that forms out of a distant tree. Her lips covered in blood, Saga smiles approvingly.

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Review:

Right out of the chute, “Nightborn” checks to make sure viewers chose the right road to ride. Finnish actress Seidi Haarla and English actor Rupert Grint smile at each other, then soak in the sights out the window as their car coasts down an unpaved woodland path. Those countryside sights consist of moss-covered stumps and dense copses of trees in every direction of the Lithuanian forest where the film was shot. Plucked cellos and softly sobbing violins simmer on the soundtrack as the couple, Saga and Jon, pulls up to a rundown house tucked too far away for anyone else to randomly find it. These telltale signs confirm the audience has arrived deep in the heart of arthouse folk horror. If this is not the desired destination, turn around now, before the partially subtitled scenes start.

Abandoning life in London, Saga and Jon have decided to raise a family in the remote home that previously belonged to Saga’s grandmother. They have a major renovation project ahead of them, as the dilapidated house’s old wooden floors are rotting so badly, there’s a tree growing right in the middle of the room they plan to turn into a nursery.

They don’t have a baby yet. That will come after Saga and Jon have spontaneous sex beneath some branches suspiciously twisted into humanlike shapes, almost as if these trees were, or are, alive.

“Nightborn” loudly announces a nine-month leap in its timeline by suddenly cutting to a catch-you-off-guard shot of a crowning head bursting from the birth canal to spatter Jon’s stunned face with blood. From the alarmed reactions of attending nurses who refuse to say anything, Saga fears the worst. Once she recovers, Saga doesn’t receive any immediate reassurance from her husband. Grint puts in a perfect portrayal of a father who isn’t quite sure how to handle the question when his wife asks, “Is he ok?” After a pause, Jon whispers, “yeah” with wide eyes and nearly no inflection. His reluctantly acquiescing “okay” sounds just as uncertain when Saga asks to see their son.

Jon isn’t the only one with an interest in keeping some curtains closed. “Nightborn” director Hanna Bergholm and cinematographer Pietari Peltola put their heads together to create terrific blocking that keeps secrets concealed. Throughout the movie, the camera deliberately doesn’t show too much of the baby’s appearance or its development, yet not with unfairly deceitful cheats. The camera just chooses angles where putting the child in silhouette makes sense for an eerie effect, or leaves the infant unseen so eager eyes instinctively fight to peek around clusters of characters.

Yet we see enough of the boy, whom Saga comes to refer to as “it” even though an inexplicable urge inspires her to name him Kuura, to know he isn’t normal. Kuura is unusually hairy, has a tendency to growl in his sleep, constantly cries unless he’s in darkness, and, perhaps most disturbingly, bloodily bites his mother’s nipple whenever he breastfeeds. Once Jon’s mother mentions a local legend about trolls stealing children and some families supposedly still having troll blood in their veins, the picture becomes clearer that Saga’s growing fears may be tied tighter to terrifying folklore than to an irrational imagination.

Appearing on the surface as though it may only crib common bits from “Rosemary’s Baby” (review here), “Delivery: The Beast Within” (review here), and dozens of other horror movies involving problematic pregnancies, a hasty hand might dismiss “Nightborn” as another imitative effort about the nightmares of parenthood. There’s a little less universality in “Nightborn’s” specific themes though, meaning its horror isn’t intended to hit the same targets for fathers, couples considering kids, or singles with no current concerns about having a family. It’s not particularly interested in the traditional trappings of demonically possessed children either.

“Nightborn” lasers its focus on Saga’s postpartum perspective. Before Kuura becomes more beastly, what weighs most on Saga’s mind is how additional weight affects her body image, how her husband seems disinterested in physical intimacy, how she must mask her misery to entertain partygoers celebrating her baby, and how she should please a disapproving mother perpetually disappointed by Saga’s decisions. As she spirals deeper into depression and delirium, the movie’s metaphors tackle feeling unlike yourself, being resigned to unhappiness, and the stress of being unable to bond with a troubling newborn.

Scattered scares are still there. “Nightborn” isn’t too mired in its sympathy for Saga’s increasingly harrowing situation that it forgets to be frightful. Nothing tops the shock of the baby being born, but Saga’s soiled underwear, torn flesh from a finger, and deep bite wounds on Saga’s body accent cerebral suspense with visual chills. Macabre moments aren’t meant to elicit repulsive reactions. They’re meant to draw viewers back into Saga’s tumultuous journey when atmosphere alone can’t continue carrying the movie.

The usual rules for slow-burn dramas apply. If Finnish folk horror steeped deep in allegories for motherhood aren’t of individual interest, “Nightborn’s” smoldering style might not fan a hot enough flame. Even if this is an appealing cup of tea, it’s not easy-to-drink Earl Grey. “Nightborn” has a more targeted taste of root vegetables and earthy herbs with hints of exotic fruit. Like the imaginary drink it mixes, the movie is something to sip patiently out of a porcelain cup, not 64 ounces of soda to gulp down with popcorn spilling out of an overpriced novelty bucket.

Review Score: 70

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