‘Welcome Home Baby’ review: Austrian genre title opens Panorama at Berlin

Dir: Andreas Prochaska. Austria/Germany. 2025. 115mins

Following the dying of her estranged father, a profitable Berlin paramedic inherits the sprawling household residence within the Austrian countryside — a spot that she barely remembers however that also homes the ghosts of a painful, repressed previous. The most recent work from Austrian author/director Andreas Prochaska leans closely into psychological thriller tropes, however delivers a hypnotic ambiance and a gripping central efficiency from Julia Franz Richter.

The movie’s potent aesthetics do the heavy narrative lifting

This marks Prochaska’s returns to the large display screen after a decade working in tv. His final movie was 2014 Austrian Western The Darkish Valley, which additionally premiered in Berlin and went on to win native awards earlier than releasing in Austria and Germany. Welcome House Child, which opens this 12 months’s Panorama, might comply with the same trajectory, though first rate phrase of mouth, notably amongst style followers, might assist discover streaming audiences additional afield. It makes the identical nice use of its remoted forest locale as did fellow Austrian/German horror The Satan’s Bathtub, which premiered in Berlin 2024. 

Like The Darkish Valley, this confidently layers a well-defined cinematic template onto an almost-idiosyncratically bucolic rural Austrian setting;  final time, it was the Western, this time it’s horror — extra particularly, the overwrought, cult-tinged American horrors of the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. Foremost on this movie’s influences is Rosemary’s Child, not least as a result of Richter (who additionally seems in Mom’s Child, one other Berlin title involved with the ravages of motherhood) appears to be like reasonably like that movie’s lead Mia Farrow.

Once we first meet Judith, nonetheless, she’s a no-nonsense Berlin paramedic, holding her personal in opposition to a demanding boss and numerous medical emergencies. (A graphic early beginning scene units the tone for the movie’s fascination with fecundity and bodily metamorphosis.) When she discovers she has inherited her father’s previous residence, Judith and her husband Ryan (Dutch actor Reinout Scholten van Aschat) journey to Austria with the intention to promote the place. It’s quickly clear, nonetheless, that the neighborhood — and maybe even the home itself — produce other concepts. 

The motion unfolds in an unnamed village within the forested area of Decrease Austria, which is so festooned with pink flags that it’s a surprise Judith and Ryan even get out of the automotive. An ominous cross looms over the street into city. Deer carcasses are a recurring motif. The home itself is filled with normal style paraphernalia; pictures with scratched out faces, big rusty keys, work of devils and skeletons. However the place instantly exerts a robust maintain on Judith, who’s determined to know why she was deserted by her mother and father as a younger little one. A scar on her chest is simply one of many clues of the trauma she might have been by means of. 

Judith additionally desires to know why she is so welcomed by a neighborhood, largely made up of smiling, confident girls and headed by the chillingly benign ‘Aunt’ Paula (Gerti Drassl), who haven’t seen her for many years, and but slowly ingratiate themselves into Judith’s life — and head. It’s not lengthy earlier than the clearly outlined traces of Judith’s ordered life in Berlin erode and she or he finds herself dropping management, struggling weird desires and jumps in time, temporal shifts which might be successfully dealt with by editor Karin Hartusch (who additionally serves up some spectacular soar scares). Ryan appears to be altering too, their shut relationship wrenched aside simply at a time when Judith wants him probably the most. 

This conclave of poisonous femininity appears to be rooted in antiquated cultural custom, and concepts of motherhood, sacrifice and generational obligation churn beneath the floor as Judith — childfree by alternative — makes an attempt to carry agency in opposition to what is predicted of her. Whereas cinematographer Carmen Triechl maybe depends an excessive amount of on off-kilter angles, Judith’s rising isolation is successfully emphasised by framing which regularly locations her alone in a single pool of sunshine surrounded by intense darkness — and, generally, thick silence. The movie’s color palette paints complete key scenes in vibrant shades of pink, yellow or cool tonal blues which might be replicated within the pictures Ryan develops within the basement darkish room, the previous slowly coming into focus.

For probably the most half, the movie’s potent aesthetics do the heavy narrative lifting, that means that each the screenplay, by Prochaska, Daniela Baumgartl and Constantin Lieb, and performances stay managed – and questions, notably concerning the neighborhood’s shadowy motivations, largely unanswered. The gloves come off, nonetheless, within the movie’s climactic scenes, by which the restrained pressure bubbles over in a no-holds-barred showdown, which can be a step too far for some viewers, or an entertaining slice of camp extra for others.