False Positive

False Positive
Starring Ilana Glazer, Justin Theroux, Pierce Brosnan, Gretchen Mol
Directed by John Lee

Ever since Roman Polanski's epic horror masterpiece "Rosemary's Baby" hit the big screen in 1968, any would-be expecting mother horror film to follow has to live in its insurmountable shadow. Even when you try to stray away from the traditional tropes, there's obvious parallels to "Rosemary's Baby" that can't be denied, and it's even worse when a film tries in a sense to give a modern re-telling of the film. While "False Positive" doesn't seem to wholly encapsulate this, the parallels between the two are stronger than most, and while it does offer an important message about the male-dominated world of fertility clinics, it doesn't quite stick the landing in lieu of presenting an off-the-wall conclusion that's utterly insane and unbelievable.

Married couple Lucy (Ilana Glazer) and Adrian (Justin Theroux) Martin have been trying for years to have a baby, but to no avail. Adrian finally convinces Lucy to see his old friend Dr. John Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), a renowned fertility doctor, and soon Lucy finds herself pregnant - with triplets. Dr. Hindle tells her that she'll have to make a difficult decision in which baby to save, due to her high-risk pregnancy: the twin boys, or the girl that's not connected to them. She wants the girl, while Adrian wants the twins, and after a heated argument he reluctantly agrees to save the girl.

As the months go on, Lucy becomes paranoid and worried about the girl she's carrying, as she experiences multiple setbacks that sends her back to Dr. Hindle's office. She joins an expecting mother's support group, and listens more to a holistic spiritual midwife named Grace Singleton (Zainab Jah), and decides to ditch Hindle and continue her pregnancy with her, to Adrian's dismay. Soon Lucy begins finding out information that make it appear that Dr. Hindle and Adrian have other plans for her unborn child, and she becomes paranoid and worried that they're out to do something nefarious - but is it all just in her "mommy brain?"

"False Positive" is a film that could've worked equally well as a horror film and a deeply dramatic movie about toxic masculinity when it comes to the female body, but it instead zig-zags between the two themes, never really coming in for a landing in either way, and instead shows a film of something that could've been better. The horror aspects of the film are the most outlandish ideas, where Lucy hallucinates bloody situations (including a scene where she's covered in blood while Adrian and Hindle talk secretly, which draws obvious comparisons to "Rosemary's Baby" itself) and you don't know if it's real or not - and that takes away from the overall feel of the film. There's true horror to be had in the tale, and by relegating it to Lucy's subconscious makes it less terrifying than the real horror that she's experiencing.

This true horror is the fact that everyone is seemingly out to get her one way or another, all the while being surrounded by superficially false platitudes that expecting mothers often hear. She had a successful job, but all her male counterparts compliment on her "glowing" but also treat her as a secretary to get their food orders. Adrian at first comes off as supportive and loving, but as she begins to stray away from Hindle's care, he becomes verbally abusive and gaslights her. Hindle and especially his head nurse Dawn belittle her in passive-aggressive ways. Even her would-be mother support group seems to have ulterior motives, and it all just can't be in her head - or could it?

The film mentions the concept of "mommy brain" often, which is a long-held perception that mothers are more forgetful and less attentive than other people. It's a trick that the film uses to try to sway the viewer into thinking that Lucy really is crazy, which undermines the power a woman has during pregnancy, as "False Positive" is surrounded by heavily male-dominated viewpoints as Dr. Hindle and Adrian continually beat those thoughts into our - and Lucy's - heads.

When the film finally reaches it's climax, it flies off the rails. The big reveals are startling and honestly nauseating (anyone who's experienced a miscarriage should probably avoid this film), and it could've been a spectacular denouement if the film had focused more on the dramatic events. Instead, it spirals into a semi-delusional, semi-real journey Lucy goes to in order to find the ultimate truth, and leaves a lot of loose ends up in the air.

Ilana Glazier is unrecognizable here as Lucy, as she's more well-known for her short, curly haired comedic performances in her co-created and co-starred Comedy Central show "Broad City." Here, she sheds her curly short hair for long, straight hair that somehow masks her and makes her an almost totally different person, which adds to the sense of realism that Lucy's story tells. You feel that this is an ordinary woman going through something tragically extraordinary, and Glazier gives a grounded performance that makes you really feel for her. On the other end of the spectrum, Justin Theroux and Pierce Brosnan play their toxic masculinity characters brilliantly, serving as the obvious villains of the movie while trying to act like they care, but obviously believing that they're the smartest people in the room because they're men. Yet the standout performance is Gretchen Mol's Dawn, who plays Dr. Hindle's right-hand nurse. She's passive-aggressive and downright chilly as she demeans Lucy at every turn and continually wears a fake plastic smile and a perfectly colored outfit that's reminiscent of evil nurses like Nurse Ratched. The performances are top-notch, but the script itself fails to deliver the true gut-punch it seemingly wanted to tell.

While trying to balance between horror and drama, "False Positive" is filled with thought-provoking ideas and nauseating visuals, but abandons itself at the end, resulting in a lot of great ideas that never come to fruition.

The Score: B