Birth/Rebirth Is A Fascinating Modern Day Frankenstein Picture
Haunting and captivating, Laura Moss' Birth/Rebirth is a modern-day Frankenstein tale that asks the age-old question, can humans play God? On the exterior, Birth/Rebirth is a film that exists within the horror spectrum, Yet it elevates itself far beyond the genre. It's a film not about terror or jump scares but morality. It asks, "What if?" If you could bring your child back, would you? If so, what would be the repercussions? Should the dead stay dead? Birth/Rebirth is a stomach-turning tale of morality that lingers on with the viewer after the credits roll.
The opening of Birth/Rebirth is gut-wrenching and doesn't let up from there. The picture begins in a delivery room with a shallow depth of field, focussing its attention on the masked nurses of the room who do little to reassure a hysterical patient during a disastrous baby delivery. The image is blurry, and the sound is muffled. A mother asks if her baby is okay. Next, we see the mother's autopsy as the camera reveals everything.
B/R is not for a weak stomach. Medical exams are made front and center loaded with blood, guts, and human tissue. It's enough to make a casual viewer nauseous. Yet none of the gore is made for shock value. The bloody carnage is to make a point. Human biology is messy yet necessary. To push toward the next evolution of modern medicine, one must be willing to get their hands dirty. The no guts, no glory in this case, lies in the reanimation of a little girl.
The Frankenstein doctor in this picture is a morgue technician named Rose (Marin Ireland). Rose wants to bring a dead child back to life. She's a wise but troubled scientist who usually behaves out of hostility when none is necessary. Being socially inept, our Frankenstein doesn't have the tools to defend herself from a grieving mother who wants her child back. When Lila( A.J. Lister) suddenly and tragically dies, her mother, Celia Morales (Judy Reyes), will go to all ends of the earth to be reunited with her deceased little girl. She doesn't have to go far, as Rose has little Lila as her test subject for reanimation. How Lila is kept alive through scientific experiments, many would consider to be unethical.
Rose's experiments are remarkable, if not disturbing. By harvesting the biological materials of pregnant women, Lila can breathe new life. What separates Birth/Reibirth from a typical horror film is that none of its horrors is sensationalized. When Lila returns, she doesn't go on a killing spree. Like any little girl, she's harmless. The only thing Lila's missing is her consciousness. To communicate, all she can do is grunt and breathe. Yet, over time and with more tests, that could change.
Bringing Lila back doesn't feel horrifying but more sentimental with a touch of scary. Lila isn't a Pet Cemetery killer. She's more of a zombie who doesn't thirst for brains and has a returning memory. The film handles its subject matter of reanimation with an enticing delicacy. By loosely implementing real science, the plot of bringing a dead child back to life seems plausible. Nobody in the film is good or bad; they're lost and afraid. Working in the maternity ward, Celia is constantly surrounded by birth, whereas Rose in the morgue is surrounded by loss. How both worlds of life and death collide together is intriguing.
To help dive the viewer into the narrative is a hypnotic synthetic score by Ariel Marx. The soundtrack plays off-beat synthesized notes to accompany the film's eerie atmosphere. Its sounds are like a mix of Blade Runner and Silent Hill. Birth/Rebirth is a character piece about a mother's undying love for her child and a scientist's need to push the envelope. How far Celia is willing to go to bring her baby back is nauseating and touching simultaneously. Celia can live a meaningful life with her deceased daughter returned to the land of the living. But at what cost is the film's driving motivator and a damn chilling one to sit through.
