'False Positive' is a mystery horror film following Lucia and Adrian as they struggle to become pregnant and seek medical assistance from Dr. John Hindle. However, Lucia starts experiencing strange happenings and spirals as she becomes paranoid of the people and their intentions around her.
The film sets off with showing the stress that Lucia and Adrian are experiencing as they try and fail to conceive a child. However, due to Adrian knowing Dr. Hindle, as he used to be his student, Lucia and Adrian visit with the doctor to help them with IUI and IVF. The procedure is successful, however Lucia turns out to have conceived twin boys and a girl. Dr. Hindle advises Lucia selective reduction, as her chances to carry all of the embryos to term are slim and may cause complications. Lucia wishes to reduce the twins in order to carry the girl to term, lovingly already naming her Wendy. As the pregnancy progresses Lucia becomes increasingly suspicious of her husband, as she discovers a safe at his home office. Lucia also occasionally notices herself being forgetful, yet it is chalked up as 'mommy brain'. Eventually gaining access to Adrian's safe, she discovers a file detailing her medical information and suggesting she is part of a study that she never signed up for. Seeking help from a friend in her mommy group, Lucia hands over the file to Corgan, whose husband is a lawyer and may advise on what her rights are.
Becoming more doubtful of Dr. Hindle's intentions, Lucia seeks out a midwife that she had seen on the cover of a magazine, offering a more natural birth path. Lucia meets with Grace Singleton, someone she believes to provide a better way for her to give birth. When the big day arrives, Lucia gives birth to the twins, not the girl as she had anticipated. Becoming detached and depressed, Lucia visits Dr. Hindle's practice and is faced with his assistant nurse Dawn, who tries to convince Lucia that her life is perfect - she has a husband and two beautiful sons, which is all thanks to Dr. Hindle. Sceptical of Dawn and her suggestion to carry on, Lucia explores Dr. Hindle's facility and ultimately is confronted by the doctor. It comes to light that Dr. Hindle used his own semen to impregnate Lucia, as he had done with all his patients, believing his genes to be superior. Outraged, Lucia beats Dr. Hindle bloody, destroys the fridge containing his semen samples and leaves with her placenta and the reduced embryo. At home, she hallucinates throwing the twins out of the window. As Adrian arrives, she hands him the twins and tells him to leave. The film closes with Lucia holding the reduced embryo to her breast and hallucinating breastfeeding it.
'False Positive' sets out a compelling premise, namely the complicated journey that Lucia goes on as she struggles with her pregnancy, initially the stress of being unable to conceive naturally and afterwards as she spirals through her term, becomes more disenchanted with what is happening around her, and eventually seeking retribution for feeling betrayed by her husband and used as part of Dr. Handle's sinister scheme. The film delves deep in illustrating the increasingly tense and uneasy state of mind that Lucia is experiencing. As the pregnancy progresses, her sense of mistrust increases, as she discovers Adrian to have withheld information from her and apparently had been in cahoots with Dr. Handle regarding the selective reduction process. Here, the film goes beyond mere paranoia and allows the sense of mistrust to develop, ultimately climaxing in the sense of absolute betrayal that Lucia experiences as she uncovers the conspiracy behind the conception. The sense of deceit is palpable and leaves both Lucia and the audience utterly destroyed when Lucia's worst fears are confirmed and her world crumbles as her life is thrown into disarray due to Adrian's actions.
The film is successful in following Lucia on her journey through pregnancy and following her deteriorating mental well being. There are multiple instances where we are invited to discover with Lucia that something is amiss, yet the film manages to balance it with reasonable explanations at times, that she may be in fact suffering from forgetfulness due to her pregnancy. The film does well in creating a dynamic back-and-forth between us questioning if Lucia is imagining the conspiracy against her or if there is an actual sinister plot at play. The continuous questioning of the true state of things keeps 'False Positive' captivating until the third act. Once Lucia gives birth to the twins, her fears are partially confirmed, and it in itself reveals to the audience that there is a scheme set against her. As Lucia heads to the clinic to confront Dr. Handle, the film seems to lose momentum. Her confrontation with the head nurse and the doctor seems to miss the mark and delivers an underwhelming set of Lucia bludgeoning the pair until they are bloody. Perhaps it is the execution of the scene or the lead up to it, however the final revelation and showdown seems to fail to deliver the full impact of the retribution that Lucia may have been seeking. Afterwards, there is a sequence that depicts Lucia fantasizing about dropping the twins out of her high-rise window, delivering a sharp punch before we realise it was all imagined by her. Yet, following that, the scene where Lucia orders Adrian to leave with the twins somehow does not meld well with the previous sequence, unfolding as what feels like a disjointed sequence, ultimately causing one to disconnect from the story and end the feature with a befuddled sense of what has transpired.
'False Positive' carries with it an engrossing premise and does well to create tension through the first half of its runtime. However, after the main characters worst fears are realised, the pacing of the film changes to a less dramatic and more confrontational tone, losing the previously established sense of unease and providing for a more disjointed and erratic final act, deterring the viewer from reaching an emotionally satisfying conclusion to Lucia's story.
Score: 2/4
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