The debut horror film of writer-director Laura Moss birth/rebirth
or Birth/Rebirth currently in theaters via Shudder and IFC Films is
second to Sick of Myself and Infinity Pool as one of the most
striking, disquieting and confident body horror debut films of the year. A postmodern science-fiction infused take on
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with staunchly maternal themes radiating
through its veins, it gradually gets under the skin with a startling amount of
dramatic weight and poses as many if not more existential questions than the
timeless tale that inspired it.
Creeping out into theaters amid a wildfire of a cinematic
landscape still reeling from the cotton candy of Barbie and the ongoing
burns of Oppenheimer, this tightly lean and mean indie comes on the
heels of another riff on classic horror literature The Last Voyage of the
Demeter which took on a critical chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Though the Crimes of the Future inspired
poster suggests a Cronenbergian exercise in clinical, invasive medical horror
which this film definitely more than delivers on, birth/rebirth is a
whole new breed of feminine horror that invokes fear, longing, anticipation and
an unprecedented ability to make you the viewer shrivel up in your seat.
After Lila suddenly dies, the two women’s lives are catapulted upon each
other when a suspicious Celie tracks the standoffish Rose down to her home and
finds Lila has somehow or another been partially revived via an experimental procedure
involving siphoning amniotic fluid and/or body parts from pregnant women. Trying to actually retrieve the desired components
for the experiment proves difficult but over the course of the movie Celie
becomes more and more determined to see this terrible destructive path through
if it means bringing her daughter back.
Grisly, thoroughly repellent and at times as hard to watch
as anything seen in the movie theater at all this year, birth/rebirth is
a bold new take on the classic Mary Shelley story with a new skin and fresh
characters while staying true to the feminine essence of the legendary novelist’s
tale. Finding the right note in every
scene, the film is expertly composed and crafted with precise, key
cinematography by Chananun Chotrungroj, edited with a whip by Taylor Mason and
radiates with dread and sorrow through Sanctuary composer Ariel Marx’s
subtly mournful electronic score.
--Andrew Kotwicki