Pregnancy thrillers carry a sense of innate foreboding within their fabric, something that is best exemplified in Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. The 1968 psychological horror casts a long shadow in terms of aspirational horror filmmaking, and rightly so, owing to its layered treatment of the anxieties and ecstasies of motherhood. Grounding itself within his borrowed premise, False Positive, A24’s latest offering, attempts to add a fairly post-modern twist to an already-overused horror trope. Despite a compelling first half, False Positive fails to imbue the pregnancy horror trope with depth or ingenuity, accelerating to a banal finish.

Writer-director John Lee aims his lens on copywriter Lucy Martin (Ilana Glazer, who also co-wrote the script), an ambitious digital marketer who has been trying to conceive with her husband Adrian (Justin Theroux) for two years. Pushed to the edge, the couple decides to seek the aid of Dr. Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), a leading fertility doctor with widely-publicized success stories. Using a self-invented method of insemination, Hindle helps Lucy get pregnant, much to the joy of the couple. Despite presenting a hopeful premise, the cold interiors of Dr. Hindle’s clinic perennially harbor a sense of unease, one that is reflected in frenetic glimpses into Lucy’s psyche and the way in which Hindle presents himself.

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Lucy (Ilana Glazer) and Adrian (Justin Theroux) in False Positive

The gap between appearance and reality widens when Hindle suggests Lucy opt for selective reduction, as she is pregnant with three embryos - two male twins and a female. This is where Lucy’s agency is completely taken away, as she is forced to fit into predetermined roles dictated by the men in her life. As time progresses, a schism forms within Lucy, who is torn between regaining autonomy over her body and giving in to the apparent concerns of those around her. The concept of motherhood is unmistakably tinged with terror, as its many joys come nowhere near the sheer horror of birthing another being into the bleakness of existence, especially when the premise is pregnant with covert and nefarious intentions.

Interestingly, Lee uses the concept of “mommy brain” in order to fuel the mounting horror pervading Lucy’s life. Are Lucy’s delusions rooted in the intense psychological changes that inherently accompany the process of pregnancy, or are they rooted in factors deemed more calculated and sinister? At this juncture, False Positive starts losing its sheen, inadvertently falling back into the hackneyed tropes that have been done to death in the most unimaginative ways possible. Although the film attempts to craft a social commentary of sorts around the frenzied lives of the characters in question, this intention falls flat due to a lack of narrative clarity and plot-driven inventiveness.

Lucy (Ilana Glazer) in False Positive

As per performances, Glazer is convincing as a woman on the verge of losing control while undergoing a change traditionally considered sacred and positively life-changing. Although Brosnan’s Hindle manages to unnerve the viewer from the get-go, his character, along with that of Theroux’s, feels underused when compared to the potential of the respective actors and the premise as a whole.

Perhaps the weakest point of False Positive is its ending, which might be considered controversial and vapid, especially as the visual imagery utilized verges more on shock value than genuine dread. An inescapable comparison to the film’s original source material emerges, serving to heighten the gap between the film’s coerced ending and Polanski’s naturally confounding one. While False Positive brims with the potential for a new era in horror, it ultimately comes off as an ill-conceived notion, a gaping rift in space and time.

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False Positive had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 18, 2021. It was released on June 25, 2021 and is available for streaming on Hulu. The film is 92 minutes long and is rated R for disturbing/bloody images, sexual content, graphic nudity, and language.

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