A solid calling card for filmmaker Laura Moss, whose undead experiment is sharp, gross horror. Our Birth/Rebirth review:
What if everything went right for Dr. Frankenstein and Igor, and they became the platonic parents of a beautiful, bouncing, baby Monster? Director Laura Moss and their co-writer Brendan J. O’Brien imagine a sharp, modern version of this best-case scenario with the horror. With dark irreverence, their transposition is a bolt of lightning into the undead subgenre that’s tight script keeps the two-hander as fresh as the day it was buried.
Put your fan-fiction aside: Mad scientist/forensic pathologist Rose and loving mother/maternity nurse Celie don’t need any nudging to forge their lives together. Just the untimely death and untimelier resurrection of Celie’s young daughter Lila . As the two crash together, jammed into a single apartment-laboratory when they’re not taking shifts at their hospital, they become a wry reminder that a family can look like anything: Even two women trying to bring an elementary schooler back to life.
But most trenchantly, Celie and Rose get together in an industry filled with bumbling, idiotic men. The medical world acts as a magnifying microcosm, where women need to look out for themselves, or risk their lives hoping that they’ll be listened to. Male doctors take the easy way during delivery, not caring about the mother’s body. Husbands throw around the word “hysterical” like real parodies of themselves.
This grows in our eyes as the apartment they share becomes warmer and tighter-knit compared to the dark and dour in city livin’ Moss and their cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroj depict. Chotrungroj, who had a fest hit last year with, is no stranger to brutal clarity. The gruesome experiments and surgeries are displayed with an off-putting evenness. Only occasionally does Moss assault us with something truly distorted and gross, and when they do, they make it count.
While the film starts relying on a few contrivances after a solid set-up—its faith in itself wavering a bit between its great premise and banger of a conclusion—is a clever, tight little horror that will leave sickos smiling and shaking our heads at Moss’ bravado. Disgusting reveal on top of disgusting reveal adds to a movie that innately understands what scares us and what brings us together . The horror debut’s easy definition as a well-worn concept turned on its head serves a good purpose.
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