There’s guts, both figuratively and literally, in the ambitious, uneasy new thriller False Positive, a minor A24 production premiering on Hulu in the US, that takes a familiar roadmap and litters it with left turns. Crudely put, it’s a Rosemary’s Baby riff for millennials, a sleek update on an ever-effective conceit that reframes the bliss of pregnancy as a terrifying body horror. Roman Polanski’s film gave birth to numerous imitators, most of which stuck to the increasingly overused blueprint and there’s something to admire here about what writer-director John Lee and his co-writer and star Ilana Glazer try to do, even if their gamble doesn’t entirely pay off.
Glazer, who remains best known for co-creating and starring in Broad City, takes a dramatic leap forward here (something her partner in crime Abbi Jacobson did with aplomb in 2018’s grim addiction drama 6 Balloons) and up until the film asks far too much from her, or arguably any actor, in the frenzied finale, she makes a convincing case for more work outside of her comic wheelhouse. She plays Lucy, a woman struggling to conceive, whose husband Adrian (Justin Theroux) takes her to see an expert in the field, Dr Hindle (an on-form Pierce Brosnan), an in-demand fertility expert as well as an old friend and mentor of his. Within a few sessions, Lucy finds herself pregnant, a miracle, but one that carries with it a lingering feeling that something is wrong.
It’s always a little jarring the first time a traditionally comedic actor suddenly crops up in more serious territory, as if you’re watching an SNL parody skit that’s yet to reveal its true hand. But the eerie, heightened world of False Positive, which takes light satirical jabs at everything from the media workplace to mommy culture, benefits from someone with such experience, Glazer as a performer managing to master the shifts in tone, even if Glazer the writer struggles to keep things quite so smooth.
The first act is deceptively well-calibrated, offsetting the loose familiarity of the set-up with something less well-explored: the slowly mounting frustration of being a woman at the mercy of men at a time when one should feel most in control of one’s own body. First at work where Lucy is patronised by flannel shirt-wearing #NotAllMen sexists and then at Dr Hindle’s clinic where she starts to figure out that she’s not being allowed much, if any, agency with her pregnancy and then finally at home by a husband whose idea of her as a mother and wife is not aligned with her own. But how much of what’s happening to Lucy is real and how much is the result of “mommy brain”? Those around her offhandedly cast aside her fears as a form of hysteria, as people often do with women, and the film works best when exploring this particularly egregious form of misogyny, something explored most recently in the book Unwell Women, how the patriarchy of medicine has not only been mentally harmful but also physically dangerous.
This crescendoes with a devastating decision Lucy has to make and one that’s wincingly well-explored, both with how it impacts her relationship and how it affects her psyche but once it’s made, Lee’s film gets stuck in second gear, a collection of hit-and-mostly-miss visions of varying creepiness, and while there are effectively rage-inducing micro-aggressions inter-spliced, the slow-burn is at times a little too slow. The unsteadying surrealism of some of Lee’s scenery and storytelling is often just confusing and distances us from the main emotional thrust of the film even as Glazer gallantly tries to draw us back in. Things really fall apart in the finale, though, as too many Big Ideas are thrown at the wall, none of them really sticking. There’s a half-assed attempt to make a comment about race along with gender but it’s too clunky to have an effect (it’s theoretically smart but in practice, it’s embarrassingly off target) and a predictable and silly last act reveal leads to a wild ending that deserves some credit for being a big swing but that it misses so spectacularly is really just maddening.
As the film crashes to a conclusion, early promise fading away, the film has the feeling of a valiant, but misguided, post-Get Out attempt to infuse social commentary within the framework of well-worn genre territory, aiming high but landing low. False Negative is pregnant with possibility but, ultimately, not much else.