Explosive births, talking foxes and the devil in a trenchcoat – the Sitges fantastic film festival in all its creepy glory

Olivia Colman goes vulpine, Rupert Grint’s newborn is a monster and Joko Anwar makes a warmhearted violent ghost story set in an Indonesian prison

If I’d ever wanted children, the films showing at the 59th edition of the International Fantastic film festival of Catalonia in the coastal town of Sitges, south of Barcelona, would have soon set me straight. This year’s recurring themes were explosive parturition, chewed-up nipples and the fruit of the womb turning out to be at best sociopathic, at worst inhuman.

The theme was celebrated in an evil-kiddy exhibition at the Miramar Cultural Centre, marking the 50th anniversary of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador’s “fantaterror” classic Who Can Kill a Child?, some of which was filmed in Sitges itself. The expo traced the subgenre from 1956’s The Bad Seed, via Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, to this year’s Nightborn, in which poor Rupert Grint, as the hapless husband, is no match for the developing folk-horror bond between his depressed wife, their newborn “child”, and the spooky forest surrounding their house. Finnish director Hanna Bergholm, in her introduction, confessed it was inspired by her experiences of motherhood. Only up to a point, one hopes.

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