Overview
- Nightborn premiered on Shudder on Friday, July 31, 2026, and stars Seidi Haarla and Rupert Grint with supporting roles from Pamela Tola, Pirkko Saisio, Rebecca Lacey and John Thomson.
- The story follows new parents who move to the mother’s childhood home in a Finnish forest and confront a newborn whose strange, inhuman traits unsettle the family.
- Director Hanna Bergholm frames the film through Nordic troll mythology and treats the forest as an active, folkloric force that shapes the film’s supernatural logic.
- Bergholm deliberately withholds the baby’s face for most of the film and leans into body-horror tropes to probe the complex, sometimes ugly emotions of motherhood.
- Early coverage balances praise for the film’s sound design and thematic ambition with criticism of its heavy stylistic choices, and positions Nightborn as Bergholm’s follow-up to her earlier film Hatching.