Mary is a disorganized millennial trying to get her life in order, and she is pregnant with an alien. Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant now has a trailer and a date: the New Zealand body horror comedy arrives on digital in the United States on October 27.
The film comes from THUNDERLIPS, the New Zealand directing duo expanding their 2024 short Help, I’m Alien Pregnant into a feature. Hannah Lynch carries Mary over from the short, opposite Yvette Parsons, Arlo Green and Jackie van Beek. XYZ Films is releasing.
The official synopsis puts Mary against doubtful doctors, an unhelpful baby daddy and an oversharing mother while she tries to survive the pregnancy and get her life back. The strongest thing in the art so far is the flame burning above Mary’s head in a clinic corridor, a halo and a hazard in the same frame.
Jackie van Beek Is the Name to Know Here
Van Beek played Jackie, the long-suffering familiar, in Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s What We Do in the Shadows, and she co-wrote, co-directed and starred in The Breaker Upperers with Madeleine Sami. Deadpan horror comedy has been a New Zealand specialty since Braindead, and van Beek has spent the modern run of it in the middle of the frame.
It Played Sundance First
The feature premiered at Sundance earlier this year and holds a 94 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from close to 20 reviews. Writing for Dread Central out of the festival, Josh Korngut called it “gooey, chewy, and radically honest body horror.” Meagan Navarro, reviewing for Bloody Disgusting, wrote that “Lynch is a fiery lead, and Mary’s journey is ultimately satisfying.”
Pregnancy has been horror’s most reliable engine since Rosemary’s Baby, and the body horror wing of the genre does not often play it for laughs. Lynch has been playing Mary since 2024. The feature catches up with her on October 27.