THUNDERLIPS and Sundance Film Festival senior programmer Adam Montgomery attend the premiere of Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. (© 2026 Sundance Institute | photo by Stephanie Dunn)
By Ramona Flume
New Zealand writing and directing duo, THUNDERLIPS, traveled to Park City to premiere an out-of-this-world sci-fi/comedy, Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, on January 23 as part of the Midnight section at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Their mission? The award-winning filmmakers wanted to make a feature that would “make everyone who has undergone the real-life horror of pregnancy and birth feel seen. … And everyone else feel sick.”
It’s a simple tale, really. Girl meets boy with alien penis. Part Alien, part The Exorcist, part Juno, this campy debut film, adapted from the team’s short Help, I’m Alien Pregnant (2024), makes an indelible mark on the hybrid body horror/sci-fi/comedy genre with zany visuals and practical effects, hilarious dialogue, and laugh-out-loud performances by an (inter)stellar cast.
Lead actor (and unforeseen mum-to-be) Hannah Lynch shines (through heaps of sweat, radioactive semen, and spontaneous combustibles) in a star-making role that shows us the cosmic consequences of what can happen when you stand in the way of a woman’s intuition. The details of the film’s unexpected pregnancy might be extraterrestrial, but the core experiences of this body-horror comedy are universally human.
The story was inspired by the real pregnancy journey of the film’s producer, Alix Whittaker, whose partner, Jordan Mark Windsor, makes up one-half of THUNDERLIPS. The couple were both onstage — along with THUNDERLIPS’ co-founder/director-writer Sean Wallace and the rest of the film’s Kiwi cast and crew — at the post-premiere Q&A, where they spoke about the inception of their new feature.
“The body horror of the whole process was a huge inspiration for us — but also how the medical institution treated us,” Whittaker says about having her intuitive concerns routinely dismissed and ignored by doctors during her pregnancy. “They just would not listen to me.” She detailed more of the “horrors of birth,” including other miseries like breastfeeding and mastitis. “TMI but both my nipples came off,” Whittaker says as the audience gasped exactly like they had during the film’s most lurid scenes. “[Jordan and I] just kept ruminating on how something humans have been doing this since forever could feel so alien and strange.”
“I was just pissed off at how everyone acted like it was normal,” Windsor, who was cradling an alien baby doll during part of the Q&A, says. “Women have been doing this for millions of years and all that stuff, but it doesn’t feel normal.”
In telling this distinctly abnormal tale, THUNDERLIPS also pays tribute to another ritual that’s almost as old as childbirth: the post-partum tradition of mothers (old and new) banding together to share the pain and wisdom of their own birth stories.
The film shifts between shocking and slimy and horny and hilarious at any given moment, but the veteran mums in the film (played by Yvette Parsons and Jackie van Beek), ground the chaotic swirl of unearthly elements as they collectively try to navigate this wild alien pregnancy with their own maternal know-how. They each deliver endearing performances that serve as cathartic love letters to motherhood in all its forms: from the overbearing to the anxious to the unwilling.
Viewers will undoubtedly hear the voice of their own mothers in the hilariously relatable weigh-ins that the mums deliver, whether they’re advising, encouraging, or criticizing their children in the film. “You know, you did most of this to my body,” Parsons’ character says to her daughter at one point, switching from accusatory to nurturing in one maternal moment. “And it was the most empowering, rewarding thing that ever happened to me.”
Although there are plenty of pulsing womb cocoons, tentacle testacles, and alien jizz projectiles to contend with, this is ultimately a film about listening to women’s intuition, the power of reclaiming one’s own life, and the otherworldly miracle of childbirth. It might even make you want to give your mom a call.
“It was impossible to figure out where to end this story,” Windsor says when an audience member cheekily asked when they could expect a sequel. “Because when you become a parent, it never ends.”
Without giving away any spoilers, THUNDERLIPS confirmed they have in fact written a sequel, and they have more than enough alien child-rearing content to take their next round of galactic grotesqueries to interplanetary levels.
