Sundance Review: BIRTH/REBIRTH Delivers Shockingly Dark Body Horror
I was really excited going into this horror movie Birth/Rebirth, mainly because I knew it had something to do with reanimation, and I am a huge fan of the 1985 campy classic Re-Animators. That said, I was completely unprepared for how brutal things were going to get. A warning: this movie is not for the squeamish.
The film focuses mainly on two women: a pathologist, Rose (Marin Ireland), who spends her free time doing an excellent Dr. Frankenstein impersonation, and a maternity nurse, Celie (Judy Reyes), a single mother just doing her best. After Celie’s daughter unexpectedly dies, Rose seizes the chance to try to bring her back to life.
Upon learning her daughter’s body has essentially been stolen by this mad scientist, Celie is at first horrified and then fascinated as the experiment appears to be working. As the women begin to work together to care for the reanimated child, we see their unique approaches to medicine and science; the two characters could not be more different and they play off of each other so well, it’s actually kind of sweet.
Pressure mounts as it gets harder and harder for the women to source things like stem cells and bone marrow to use to keep the girl alive, and the ethics of how they’re sourced only grow shadier.
As you can probably guess, there is a lot of blood, needles, and medical procedures in this movie. While light on jump scares, there is plenty of Cronenberg-esque body horror to keep you on the edge of your seat (or with your face buried in your hands.)
The description from Sundance reads:
Rose is a pathologist who prefers working with corpses over social interaction. She also has an obsession — the reanimation of the dead. Celie is a maternity nurse who has built her life around her bouncy, chatterbox 6-year-old daughter, Lila. One unfortunate day, their worlds crash into each other. The two women and young girl embark on a dark path of no return where they will be forced to confront how far they are willing to go to protect what they hold most dear.
The devilishly perceptive script by Laura Moss and Brendan J. O’Brien reimagines a classic horror myth with such a complete, contemporary understanding that it becomes something exciting, terrifying, and singularly new. They ground this chilling fantasy in the complex psychologies of its leads, all too convincingly played by Judy Reyes, Marin Ireland, and A.J. Lister. This standout directorial debut by Laura Moss is a wonderfully twisted tale that is sure to be one of the big cerebral shockers of the year.
