Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant

Mother and adult child relationships, unplanned pregnancy and all the social expectations that go with it are in the spotlight in Thunderlips’ comedic festival hit, the kind of film that Aotearoa/New Zealand has excelled at for decades and nobody else has ever really managed to pull off in the same way. It’s a film which does not hold back, yet whose body horror elements seem entirely on point, and which is deeply sympathetic to real life experiences, in all their diversity, throughout.

Some kinds of diversity are more easily accepted than others. When Mary (Hannah Lynch) and Cynthia’s (Yvetter Parsons) new neighbour, Ann (Jackie van Beek), tries to explain that her son has “the kind of deformity we don’t like to talk about,” intersex viewers may wince in recognition, but this is something rather more out of the ordinary. It is, of course, talked about, because Cynthia is persuasive when she scents gossip. Back home, she immediately tells her daughter about it, adding that she thought she might be into it, judging by her search history. Mary is appalled, of course, but at her mother’s rudeness rather than anything else, even though she’s not always delicate herself. When she meets Boo (Arlo Green) down in the laundry room, she asks to see it.

“What do the tentacles do?” she asks.

Events proceed from there. It turns out that avoiding bodily contact isn’t sufficient for safer sex where this type of extraterrestrial influence is concerned. Nor, in fact, is keeping one’s jeans on. When Mary realises that she could be pregnant, she wastes no time in going to get the morning after pill, but nothing seems capable of resolving her predicament. Meanwhile, everyone she speaks to congratulates her on the pregnancy, and Cynthia keeps trying to cheer her up by telling her that she might find she wants the baby when it’s actually born, as if she’ll be reassured by the idea of losing control of her own mind.

It’s not just the physiological experience that separates people who have been pregnant from those who have not. It’s all the secret knowledge. Perhaps out of fear that they’ll choose to avoid it, a whole lot things are rarely spoken about until they happen. “A difficult pregnancy,” older woman and medical staff say to Mary, nodding sagely to one another, as real life symptoms are exaggerated for comedic effect, yet not really made that much more awful. It’s not just the sudden vomiting of strange coloured liquid, nor the purple rash spreading like a spiderweb across her belly – poor Mary gets the works. Naturally she takes it out on Boo, who wants to do the right thing but has no idea what that is. What is perhaps more surprising is the way it brings her closer to Cynthia, who stays by her side even when things get truly weird, in a nicely drawn relationship which gives each actor the opportunity for a different kind of comedy.

Towards the end, the grotesquerie gives way to some creative and visually striking special effects, and it’s noticeable that, despite frequent protests that this is unknown territory, the alien reproductive system has been quite well worked out. pleasingly, there are no compromises when it comes to the human one, which feels like it’s informed by real experience throughout, and refreshingly free of sentiment. What emerges is a strangely honest take on how people cope with the shock of impending parenthood, with alien fun thrown in for good measure. And yes, it does get easier.

Reviewed on: 17 Oct 2026