JP Nunez
It’s not often that we get two great reimaginings of the same classic horror story in a single year, but this just might be one of those rare times. About a month ago, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster gave us a fantastic new riff on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and a bit over a month from now, another film might do the exact same thing. birth/rebirth is yet another promising new Frankenstein-esque story, and if the trailer is any indication, it’s going to be amazing.
birth/rebirth is about two women, a pathologist named Rose and a maternity nurse named Celie, whose lives unexpectedly collide. See, Rose is obsessed with reanimating the dead, so when Celie’s young daughter tragically passes away, she steals the body for her twisted (or humanitarian, depending on your point of view) experiments. Unsurprisingly, Celie eventually finds out, and these two characters have to figure out how far they’re willing to go to preserve this little girl’s second chance at life.
I’m a huge Frankenstein fan, so that plot synopsis alone is enough to get me interested. I’m always up for a new take on Mary Shelley’s classic story, and this one sounds particularly intriguing. It seems like it’s going to home in on the moral dilemmas these kinds of experiments raise, and if you’ve read any of my in-depth analysis articles, you know that’s right up my alley.
In fact, the premise is so good that I was interested in this movie before the trailer came out, and now that I’ve seen the trailer, birth/rebirth has become an absolute must-watch for me. Everything about this film, from the acting to the atmosphere to the cinematography, looks totally spot-on, so I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.
birth/rebirth will be playing at the upcoming Fantasia International Film Festival, and then it’ll hit theaters on August 18.
