QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN

Tast year was overflowing with horror movies about the autonomy of the female body: prequels The First Omen (Arkasha Stevenson) and Apartment 7A (Natalia Erika James), nunsplotation Immaculate (Michael Mohan), and the entirely original Cuckoo (Tilman Singer). That’s perhaps related to the overturning of Roe v. Wade just a couple of years earlier. Welcome Home Baby continues this trend into 2025.

Judith (Julia Franz Richter) is an emergency doctor in Berlin and knows next to nothing about her parents. Following the death of her father, she inherits her family’s house in a small Austrian town. While Judith can’t remember anything about her youth, the townsfolk immediately recognise her. They welcome her back with open arms. Everybody is overjoyed to see Judith again. Most crucially, they expect her to move into the house, become the town’s doctor, and create a family of her own. In fact, they are very demanding. That she’s only here to sell off the house and find out why her parents gave her away as a young child is of no importance to them.

Director Andreas Prochaska riffs on The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975), also a movie about townsfolk meddling with a young woman. But there is at least one remarkable difference: Welcome Home Baby portrays a decidedly matriarchal ruling class. There is hardly a male character in the film, and the few present serve mostly as a tool (pun intended) for women The toxic machinations of the patriarchy – pressure and oppression – are still there though.

Welcome Home Baby is also indebted to the trend of elevated horror, particularly Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019). The action is rather slow and atmospheric, and the story patiently builds towards a big reveal. Carmen Treichl’s camera creeps along the corridos of the enormous halls and trees surrounding the town. The tone is mostly dark, with some unexpected splashes of colour. The film’s strongest image is a banquet: the townsfolk feast at the table, with a very significant painting in the background

This is a weird movie bursting with inexplicable events. Residents always show up in time. Images suddenly become blurred. These are developments that the director simply refuses to explain. This is not frustrating, quite on the contrary. It makes the work more impenetrable. The big problem with Welcome Home Baby is that – despite these unusual devices – the story remains fairly predictable, and the final product is still a largely derivative genre movie.

Welcome Home Baby just premiered in the Panorama section of the 75th Berlinale.