Womb is a horror-thriller film, and is directed by Bridget Smith, and the cast includes Taylor Hanks, Ellen Adair, Myles Clohessy, Gianna Gagliardi, Elizabeth Yu, Abbey Hafer, Corrie Graham, Brian Anthony Wilson.
My Thoughts on Womb
There’s a certain unease that settles in when horror pulls its inspiration not from the supernatural, but from something disturbingly real, and Womb, a psychological horror-thriller rooted in the rare but chilling crime of fetal abduction, had all the makings of a genre standout.
It’s a premise that provokes immediate discomfort. but as the film unfolds, it becomes clear that its ambition outweighs its ability to sustain tension or deliver narrative depth.
Hailey (Taylor Hanks), is a recovering addict navigating her first pregnancy, and she and her partner Raymond head to a remote cabin to meet his estranged sister, Martha, and the setting, a classic horror trope, promises isolation, vulnerability, and emotional pressure, and when a camouflaged figure begins stalking Hailey, intent on taking her unborn child, the film reveals its central terror.
It’s a bold concept, where real world horror with psychological and bodily stakes, but unfortunately, Womb doesn’t quite know how to escalate from premise to payoff.
The film starts well enough, with some atmospheric dread, and there’s nothing more terrifying than the plausible, yet the early promise is gradually undermined by a second act that grows increasingly repetitive and structurally thin.
The cabin is never fully utilized as well as it could be, and instead of growing more suffocating, it begins to feel stagnant, as Hailey’s escape attempts and confrontations with the abductor loop in a rhythm that lacks variation, and rather than deepening the suspense, the narrative just circles itself.
We’re told it’s treacherous, unhygienic, dangerous, but those threats never evolve, and the film never mines the full psychological potential it sets up, and the pacing is also a persistent issue, where there’s a distinct sense that this concept might have been better in the short film format.
While the premise is interesting, the plot can’t quite stretch it across a feature length runtime, and by the third act, the film loses momentum and some urgency, ending in not so much a climax, but more of a slow fizz.
Perhaps most disappointing though is the film’s villain.
Horror villains don’t always need elaborate backstories, but they do need presence, and the abductor here, is as forgettable as they come, where there’s no mythos, no mystique, just an anonymous threat without any of the psychological texture that makes great villains linger in the mind, and when their identity is revealed, it registers more as a shrug than a shock.
Not everything about the film is bad though
Taylor Hanks anchors the film with a performance that is both physically and emotionally raw, where she captures Hailey’s desperation without veering into melodrama, and her presence gives the film its emotional gravity, so even when the script falters, Hanks finds honesty in the character's unraveling.
Womb gestures at larger ideas, but just doesn’t quite thread them into a cohesive narrative, and it’s a film that reaches for cultural relevance, but never digs deep enough to make its commentary truly resonant.
So in the end, it ends up being an interesting idea in search of a stronger structure, where it raises real-world fears, but fails to fully explore or escalate them, and while this could have been a harrowing experience to watch, instead, it's a film that leaves you mildly unsettled, but also unsatisfied.