Some Scary Horror Stuff for You!

Emma, a down-on-her-luck waitress, wakes up naked and alone in the woods. She’s covered in dirt and scratches, and she can’t remember the night before. Almost immediately, she begins exhibiting disturbing signs that she’s pregnant, despite it being far too soon after conception. It sends Emma down an unexpected journey full of gruesome body horror and dark conspiracy in Quibi’s latest series The Expecting.

AnnaSophia Robb stars as Emma, the young woman struggling to make ends meet while undergoing horrific changes within her body. The Expecting was written by Ben Ketai (The Strangers: Prey at Night) and directed by American Psycho‘s Mary Harron. A mother herself, Harron put it best as to why the concept of pregnancy provides fertile ground for horror: “It is like your own personal horror movie because of the way your body changes so bizarrely. Your body has this almost independent life on its own.”

Emma’s desire to break free from her troubled past is compounded by her becoming a host to potentially something not quite human. The lack of anyone to turn to creates terrifying isolation. She questions the intentions of her new boyfriend, Tyler (Rory Culkin, Scream 4), and her OB-GYN, Dr. Green (Mira Sorvino, Mimic).

From Platinum Dunes and Dark Castle, the 11-episode series premiered yesterday on Quibi. New chapters will launch every weekday until the October 15th season finale. In celebration of The Expecting’s due date, we’re looking back at pregnancy horror classics.

The Fly

David Cronenberg’s seminal body horror film might chronicle the grotesque change Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) undergoes when his DNA is unwittingly spliced with a fly’s, but Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) endures body horror of her own. As Brundle transforms into something monstrous, Quaife discovers she’s pregnant with his child. Watching him become Other strikes her with utter panic; what if her baby is part fly? The tense and heartbreaking scene in which Quaife seeks an abortion in the middle of the night catalyzes one devastating finale. The Fly may not center around pregnancy, but it’s vital to the narrative and no less potent than Seth’s transformation. Especially thanks to one shocking nightmare sequence.

Village of the Damned

In this sci-fi horror classic, the inhabitants of Midwich suddenly fall unconscious. Four hours later, they regain consciousness, without any explanation of the anomaly. Two months later, all child-bearing aged women in the area discover that they’re pregnant, regardless of marital and partnership status. The circumstances of their pregnancies prove peculiar, and they all give birth at the same time. Village of the Damned focuses on the eerie children that stem from this incident, but miraculous conception against all women’s will is inherently horrifying. No chance for consent, these women all gave birth to supernaturally powered children that feel Other. It’s creepy.

Prevenge

Written and directed by Alice Lowe, Prevenge stars Lowe as Ruth, a woman struggling in the wake of her partner’s death. Ruth is seven months pregnant, and she starts to hear a voice she’s convinced belongs to her unborn baby. That voice persuades her to kill, and Ruth embarks on a murderous spree. Lowe takes a different approach to pregnancy horror by giving it a darkly funny, psychological twist. Ruth is a woman unhinged, the mental toll of depression driving her to kill.

Baby Blood

Like Prevenge, Baby Blood centers around a woman driven to kill by her fetus. Only in this extreme French horror film, the fetus isn’t human. A strange creature crawls into Yanka’s (Emmanuelle Escourrou) uterus and urges her to kill so that it can feed off the blood of her victims and grow. Baby Blood goes heavy on the blood, but it also injects plenty of humor. Although the creature promises to end humankind, Yanka finds herself bonding to the life growing inside her. It’s affecting and bizarre.

Grace

Horror Queers Grace

Madeline (Jordan Ladd) and her husband desperately wanted a child, suffering through multiple failed attempts. In their third attempt, they succeed at getting pregnant, but complications cause the couple to rush to the hospital. On the drive back, they get into a car accident that results in Madeline’s husband and her unborn baby’s death. She quietly carries it to term, and when delivered, the stillborn miraculously returned to life. Except, the baby isn’t normal at all and seems only capable of digesting human blood. Its appetite is growing. Grace examines the real fears of losing a child at a moment’s notice, and the frightening depths a mother will traverse for her baby. No matter the grim cost.

Inside

Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s breakout film upped the ante on a brutal home invasion thriller. Still deep in the throes of depression after losing her husband in an accident, a woman on the verge of motherhood must contend with a violent woman desperate to claim the baby as her own at any cost. This time, the threat to pregnancy is external. Beatrice Dalle petrifies as the murderous La Femme, a woman with an iron will and ruthlessness in taking the unborn baby for herself. Pregnancy is hard enough, but in this memorable thriller, it can be deadly.

Rosemary’s Baby

The mother of all pregnancy horror films, Rosemary’s Baby captured the isolated terror of pregnancy like no other. Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) thinks she has it all. Rosemary just landed a coveted apartment, her husband sees new success in his acting career, and he finally gives in to her request to have a baby. Rosemary’s overjoyed until the pregnancy begins taking a toll on her body, and she realizes there’s something very, very wrong about this fetus growing inside her. That’s because her husband sold her body to Satan in exchange for a career boost. Poor Rosemary is ailing in health and gaslit by everyone around her. Pregnancy has never been so isolating and terror-inducing as it is here. Not much beats the film’s final moments, in which Rosemary finally lays eyes on the devil’s spawn she’s given birth to.

The Expecting is now streaming on Quibi, with new chapters launching every weekday until the October 15th season finale.