Sundance Hit ‘Birth/Rebirth’ is Tense Body-Horror [Review]

At this past January’s Sundance Film Festival, halfway through a screening of Laura Moss’ “Birth/Rebirth,” the Rose Wagner theater had to be evacuated, with paramedics shortly arriving on the scene soon after.

Medics and Police showed up. Several people felt sick, one was supposedly lying on the lobby floor. The audience was told outside that if anyone was feeling sick to seek medical attention.

This was just a reaction to the medical-horror elements of “Birth/Rebirth,” which, truth be told, isn’t going to have you fainting. There have been way more shocking movies than this one, but one thing it does do is immediately grab your attention.

Moss’ film tells the story of a single mother and a childless morgue technician who join forces to reanimate a little girl from the dead. The film, released today in NYC and L.A theaters, can best be described as “medical-horror”, a fascinating riff on the Frankenstein story.

Rose (Marin Ireland), a loner maternity nurse, convinces Celie (Judy Reyes), the mother of a dead six-year-old girl, Lila, that her child can be kept alive via a serum based on miscarried human fetuses. Both of these women will embark on a dark journey, forced to confront the definition of what is dead and undead.

“Birth/Rebirth” is punishing psychological horror, body-horror, to the extreme, and the kind of small indie gem I tend to seek out at the movies. There’s two outstanding central performances from Ireland and Reyes who really just take it to the next level in their sheer commitment to their tormented roles.

These are two desperate women who continuously disorient the viewer. They both look as though they haven’t slept in days, which fits well with their characters’ psyches, and that seems to be the point of “Birth/Rebirth” — it punishes, no, pummels you with its brainy shocks.

Moss shoots her characters through narrow spaces, meant to give off a claustrophobic feel in the viewer. She’s clearly, loosely, adapting Shelly’s “Frankenstein,” but as a 21st century mother/daughter story. Celie is obsessed in reviving her daughter, and when it does happen it’s not what she expected.

I’d rather not divulge too many details about “Birth/Rebirth” (the less you know, the better), but this is the type of fearless genre statement that oozes with vision, even as its ambitions don’t always hit the nail on the head. [B]