Netflix users sacrifice an unsettling occult adoption chiller at the altar of the most-watched charts

The horror genre has never been a safe haven for pregnant women, with all sorts of demonic entities and crazed killers seeking out unborn children for a multitude of terrifying means over the decades, with last year’s Malaysian chiller Inang (also known as The Womb internationally) making for a startling addition to canon.

Leaning into cliches, the story makes it perfectly clear that you should never trust the kindness of strangers, something that anyone who’s seen even a handful of cinematic scare-fests in their life already knows all too well. Of course, characters within the context of horror don’t exactly make the smartest decisions, which regularly leads to a sinister outcome.

In the case of Inang, supermarket worker Wulan is ditched by her boyfriend after discovering she’s fallen pregnant, and decides to seek out a support agency on social media, which leads her into the path of the affluent Santoso family. They offer to adopt the baby once it’s welcomed into the world, but before long, it becomes clear that there’s a decidedly occult reason why they’re so desperate to attain the infant.

Suffice to say, the clan has an unsavory history for sacrificing newborns in order to protect their own son from a generational curse, plunging Wulan into a nightmarish battle for survival. Inang may not be the most original or unique entry into a well-worn splinter cell or terror, but it’s nonetheless proven to be a smash hit for Netflix subscribers, after FlixPatrol cut the cord to unveil it as one of the streaming service’s most-watched features around the world.