'Nightborn' Review: A Visually Striking Folk Horror That Treads Familiar Ground
By Jack Ransom - October 15, 2026
One of the joys of a film festival is selecting a movie purely from a brief synopsis, no trailer context, and Nightborn was one that caught my eye. After a tad more research I realised that this is the second feature film from director Hanna Bergholm, who was behind the camera of 2022’s Hatching (a solid Odeon ‘Scream Unseen’ gem I recall). Nightborn taps into similar themes, however suffers from familiar plot beats, and a screenplay that lacks depth.
What is Nightborn about?
In a Finnish forest, Saga (Seidi Haarla) and her husband Jon (Rupert Grint) embark on a new chapter as parents. But Saga's joy is overshadowed by a chilling suspicion about their newborn, unbeknownst to Jon, causing a rift as she alone grapples with the disturbing truth.
Despite its familiar plot beats and screenplay shortcomings, Nightborn still manages to entertain and it certainly got some fun reactions out of my audience with its dabblings of dark humour, gross out imagery and (possibly intentional at points) off-kilter dialogue line deliveries. At just over 90 minutes (including credits) it certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome and keeps a consistent pace and swiftly escalates as Kuura (the child) becomes more hostile and Saga’s paranoia, fear and anger become more prevalent.
Similarly to Hatching, themes of motherhood, family dysfunction and challenging child upbringing are all the forefront and very on-the-nose. It is quite surface level and the screenplay clunkily handles certain clashes between Saga and Jon, and had me questioning their responses to certain revelations about Kuura and reactions to his actions. I also wish there was more focus on the folklore side of the narrative, as I loved the forest setting and how its influence (literally) starts to spread over the house.
Visually this is impressive and has memorable imagery in its location setting and moments horror. As mentioned, the forest setting is perfect at crafting an isolated, eerie atmosphere and seeing the burgeoning roots, crunching leaves, thick, lush greens and the warped faces of human anatomy inflected trees really excels. An effective technique was keeping Kuura’s face hidden in shadow for the majority of the runtime, there are wince-inducing bodily trauma shots and the sound design for the rumble of the forest too Kuura’s piercing and intentionally ear-scraping cries is well handled.
Haarla throws herself into this performance. Switching from upbeat, optimistic and excitable to embittered, impatient, exhausted and feral. She really goes for it here. Grint unfortunately can’t match her presence, but does convey a genuine sense of attempting connection and dedication to this family. The screenplay does hinder their actions at times and the performances can come off totally mismatched, particularly during the more heightened moments.
Nightborn is a solid slice of folk horror that boasts some superb imagery, a fantastical element that I wished was more focused upon and a go-for-broke lead performance from Seidi Haarla. It does tap into a lot of familiar territory and is lacking tangible investment and outright thrills. However, Nightborn is still worth a peek for fans of this particular horror sub-genre.
'Nightborn' releases in UK cinemas on October 30, 2026.
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Jack Ransom
Senior Writer
Jack loves to talk films: After a regular cinema trip, he likes to review them, rank them, react to them or even adding to his physical media collection!
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