Review: Pregnancy Horror/Thriller "Reunion" Captures an Estranged Mother-Daughter Vibe, But Disappoints

Pregnancy horror films intrigue and fascinate me, as they often say so much about gender, bodies, and control. Family dynamics, especially fraught parent-child relationships, provide interesting terrain for films to explore.

Written and directed by Jake Mahaffy, "Reunion" is a moody, atmospheric New Zealand horror/psychological thriller exploring family dynamics and long-buried secrets. Ellie (Emma Draper), who's pregnant, returns to her family home after the death of her grandparents, where she's reunited with her estranged mother, Ivy (Julia Ormond).

Ellie and Ivy share a contentious relationship. Ivy says she wishes they were closer, a "real family." But her actions contradict that, as she perpetually criticizes Ellie; she's also controlling, lacks boundaries, and has erratic moods. Julia Ormond gives a good performance, and the film adeptly captures Ivy and Ellie's fractured, difficult relationship and the push-pull of fraught mother-daughter relationships. Disappointingly, the film lacks tension.

Soon after her arrival, Ellie hears a girl calling her name and witnesses strange sights - green ooze in a sink, and something try to push its way out of a cardboard box. Ellie starts to see a girl in the house: Her deceased half-sister, Cara (Ava Keane). Throughout the film, Cara haunts Ellie. It's unclear if Ellie is hallucinating, or if Cara's specter is actually a ghost. Ellie's childhood memories commingle with the present, and as the film progresses she remembers more from her childhood. Fragments of flashbacks to the circumstances of Cara's death slowly disentangle.

The film uses ableist tropes about mental health to make the audience question Ellie's sanity. For instance, when Ellie says she's going to stay in her old room, Ivy contradicts her, saying that it was the guest room and denouncing her memory. Is it true, or is her mother gaslighting her? Ivy tells the house carpenter (who's also Ellie's ex) that Ellie isn't taking her medication. But the film doesn't confront or subvert those tropes.

Despite the setting of a spacious old house, it feels claustrophobic, cluttered with packed boxes and bric-a-brac, perhaps as a metaphor for Ivy and Ellie's unresolved issues. There are also images of blood in liquid, creepy home movies, interesting frames shot through keyholes in doors, and Ellie's face refracted through a crystal vase.

Such visual motifs abound; sprinkled throughout the film are strange and disturbing illustrations, including of pregnancy and babies: A woman with the planet as her body nurses a baby; a man eats a baby; in one nightmarish scene, a misshapen creature is breastfed as though it were a baby.

But these aesthetics are not visually arresting enough to compensate for a lack of compelling engagement. When Ellie eventually confronts her mother and demands the truth about Cara and Ellie's childhood, the scene should pay off the strange hauntings that reflect on their relationship, and yet it strangely feels anti-climactic.

Unfortunately, though "Reunion" attempts to convey a moody atmosphere with its creepy, eerie imagery and symbolism, it doesn't delve deeply enough into its themes, and squanders its intriguing premise.

"Reunion" in theaters and on VOD/Digital February 5, 2021