Sundance 2026: Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant Team Breaks Down Absurdity, Grounded Emotion and Genre Balance
- Horror Movies Uncut
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SUNDANCE 2026: Inside the Absurd, the Intimate, and the Human Core of Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant
By the time Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant hits Sundance’s Midnighters lineup, it’s already clear the film isn’t content to sit comfortably inside a single genre box. The New Zealand sci-fi comedy from filmmaking duo Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor — collectively known as THUNDERLIPS — arrives coated in slime, awkwardness and provocation. But beneath the outrageous premise is something far more deliberate: a grounded exploration of relationships, accountability and what happens when comfort finally runs out.
Horror Movies Uncut caught up with the cast and creative team via Zoom as they prepared for their Sundance 2026 world premiere in Park City. What emerged from the conversation was a thoughtful breakdown of how a film this absurd stays emotionally anchored — and why that balance mattered from day one.
Wallace and Windsor were quick to clarify that despite its Midnighters placement, they never viewed the project strictly as a horror film.
“Before we started shooting, people would ask us, ‘So you’re making a horror, right?’ And we kept saying no,” Windsor explained. “We were making a kitchen-sink, down-to-earth drama first.”
That framing shaped everything from performance to visual language. The filmmakers described intentionally shooting the film with multiple lens sets, allowing the movie to shift its visual identity as the story escalates. Early scenes are designed to feel familiar, almost mundane — a recognizable emotional reality that makes the later sci-fi and body horror elements land harder.
“If the alien stuff comes first, it doesn’t mean anything,” Wallace said. “But if you’re watching real people in a very real situation, that’s when the absurdity actually becomes funny — and uncomfortable.”
That philosophy carries through Hannah Lynch’s performance as Mary, a character defined less by action than avoidance. Lynch approached Mary not as a caricature, but as a deeply recognizable type — someone committed to comfort, delay and self-preservation until circumstances leave no room to hide.
“I related to her immediately,” Lynch said. “She reminded me of a younger version of myself — and honestly, a lot of people I know.”
Lynch described Mary as someone living in a world overloaded with noise, pressure and expectation, where opting out can feel like the only form of control. What makes the character compelling, she explained, is not growth in a traditional arc sense, but conviction.
“She knows what she wants, even if it looks selfish from the outside,” Lynch said. “And when it comes down to it, she fights for that.”
If Mary is chaos and deflection, Yvette Parsons’ Cynthia is gravity. As Mary’s mother, Cynthia serves as the emotional stabilizer — a presence that grounds the film even as it spirals deeper into escalation.
Parsons drew heavily from personal experience, both as a parent and as a daughter.
“She wants things for Mary that Mary doesn’t necessarily want,” Parsons said. “That tension felt very real to me.”
Rather than playing Cynthia as purely nurturing or overbearing, Parsons leaned into contradiction — a woman who loves fiercely, denies inconvenient truths, and believes she knows what’s best even when she doesn’t listen.
“She’s funny. She’s loving. She’s frustrating,” Parsons said. “I just put the clown fence on and became her.”
Arlo Green’s Boo exists on the opposite end of that spectrum — emotionally detached, socially anxious, and perpetually unsure of his place in the room. Green described Boo as someone who never learned how to grow because no one trusted him to.
“He’s still like a child,” Green said. “He’s hyper-aware of everyone else — how they see him, what they think of him — and that anxiety just takes over.”
Rather than pushing Boo into the margins, Green focused on making that disconnection active, a constant internal churn that shapes every interaction. The result is a character who feels essential even when he struggles to fully participate.
As the conversation circled back to the filmmakers, Wallace and Windsor addressed one of the film’s central tensions: modern individualism colliding with unavoidable accountability. Rather than positioning the film as a critique, they framed it as an exploration.
“We don’t want to come down on one side,” Wallace said. “We want to respect both arguments and let the audience wrestle with it.”
Windsor echoed that sentiment, emphasizing their desire to avoid didactic storytelling.
“We’re just putting both sides of a good argument on screen and letting people decide what they believe.”
That openness extends to Lynch’s final reflections on Mary. Despite the film’s humor, Lynch said she never played the role as comedy.
“I didn’t feel like I was in a funny situation,” she said. “I felt like everything was serious.”
What ultimately grounded her performance was the mother-daughter relationship at the center of the film — a dynamic so universal it reframes even the most extreme circumstances.
“When you meet someone’s parent, suddenly everything makes sense,” Lynch said. “That relationship helped me understand Mary completely.”
Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant may arrive at Sundance wrapped in body horror and absurdity, but the team behind it is clear-eyed about what gives the film its staying power: recognizable people, unresolved tensions, and the uncomfortable truth that independence often collapses the moment support is removed.
As the final Sundance in Park City unfolds, Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant stands as a reminder that even the wildest genre films resonate most when they start from something painfully human.