It's not what she was expecting.
False Positive is a 2021 horror film, written by and starring Ilana Glazer, and cowritten and directed by John Lee.After months of trying and failing to get pregnant, Lucy (Glazer) and Adrian (Justin Theroux) Martin finally find their dream fertility doctor in the illustrious Dr. John Hindle (Pierce Brosnan). But after becoming pregnant with a healthy baby girl, Lucy begins to notice something sinister through Hindle's gleaming charm, and she sets out to uncover the unsettling truth about him, and her own “birth story.” As if getting pregnant weren't complicated enough…
The film also has supporting performances by Zainab Jah, Gretchen Mol, Sophia Bush.
The film was produced by A24, and had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 18, 2021 ahead of a wide release by Hulu on June 25, 2021.
Tropes in this film include:
- Aerith and Bob: Lucy, Adrian, and...Corgan.
- Bloody Horror: The film opens with a shot of a blood-spattered Lucy walking through deserted streets. That shot is from when she returns from confronting Dr. Hindle at the clinic.
- Bondage Is Bad: Or, well, S&M. Adrian is into watching choking porn to jerk off, and he is a controlling narcissist who betrays Lucy to his old college friend.
- Gaslighting: Following a successful treatment of artificial insemination, Lucy begins to suspect that Dr. Hindle is doing this to her, such as by denying that he aborted her "parasitic" twins.
- I Never Told You My Name: During Lucy's baby shower, Corgan calls her by her given name of Lucia. Lucy becomes suspicious as she had never shared it with Corgan.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Played with. Lucy's sons improbably survived the abortion that Lucy thought she had, while her daughter did not. Then it gets played straight because Lucy pretends to drop the babies out of the window and kill them, but she's ultimately pretending.
- Magical Negro: Parodied. The midwife Grace is Black, and Lucy hallucinated a bunch of "tribal" imagery in her office simply because that was how she felt more comfortable.
- Medical Rape and Impregnate: Lucy accuses her doctor of doing this to her. He tells her there is no need to get hysterical. And he did.
- Men Are Better Than Women: Dr Hindle and Adrian both believe this, as they conspire to override Lucy's wishes and not abort her baby sons in order to "carry on" Hindle's line more strongly.
- Not Wanting Kids Is Weird: Lucy and Adrian mock two of Lucy's friends for not being ready to or orientated towards have kids as they're having fertility treatment.
- Obscene OB-GYN: Dr. Hindle has abused his position as an OB-GYN to artificially inseminate several of his patients with his own DNA, including Lucy Martin
- Shout-Out:
- Lucy's Affably Evil husband is called Adrian.
- Lucy wants to call her baby Wendy.
- Dr Hindle's surname seems to come from Art Hindle, who starred in The Brood (a movie by David Cronenberg, who also directed Dead Ringers about creepy body horror gynaecologists.)
- The Shadow Knows: At one point, Lucy has a vision while looking at an old edition of Peter Pan. She notices his famous shadow on the book cover begin to distort into an inhuman shape.
- White and Red and Eerie All Over: Lucy is wearing a white shirt when she goes off to confront Dr. Hindle. She returns all covered in blood.
