Independent Spirit ‘One To Watch’ Nominee, Laura Moss makes their standout feature directing debut with BIRTH/REBIRTH, with such a contemporary understanding that it is both exciting and terrifying in equal measure which New York Times describes an ‘ultrasmart, ferociously feminist take on the Frankenstein myth’ (New York Times) 

Fresh off the film festival circuit, having premiered at both Sundance and the London Film Festival earlier this year, BIRTH/REBIRTH features Rose (played by Marin Ireland), a pathologist who prefers working with corpses over social interaction and that is evident right from the first moments we see her. Rose also has an obsession  and one which we learn as the plot unfolds before our eyes.

In Birth/Rebirth we also meet Celie (played by Judy Reyes) a maternity nurse in the same hospital who has built her life around her bouncy, chatterbox six-year-old daughter, Lila (played by A.J. Lister). When a tragic event unfolds for Celie, she & Rose finds their worlds colliding and things get even stranger than they already had been from the first moments we begin watching Birth/Rebirth.

 In an earlier article I had put out in advance of the films release, It did have more plot details than I would want to share here and so I have now removed those and will give you some great advice from one film fan (me) to another (you)  Venture into Birth/Rebirth knowing as little as possible about it if you can and you’ll get the full ‘what am I watching?’ effect that is missing in a lot of films nowadays.   The film is so wonderfully creepy in a David Cronenberg sort of way and whilst the plots are not the same at all, I also got the same vibe that I did when I watched Jen & Sylvia Soska’s American Mary a few years ago for the first time. Birth/Rebirth is fantastic, its unsettling, its bizarre, its very unique yet grounded in a reality we believe and is definitely a film that thriller/horror fans should check out.  It has a very classic horror feel to it which I also love, the atmosphere that the film surrounds us with works to perfection and that is most definitely enhanced by Composer Ariel Marx who delivers one of the creepiest and unnerving horror film scores that I have heard since Christopher Young’s score for 2012’s Sinister. Its no secret or revelation that a good music score can enhance or elevate a film up a notch or two, but Ariel’s score here is a huge win for Birth/Rebirth.

Overall Birth/Rebirth is a great film which fires on all cylinders and there is a lot of great things to say about it, however for me the onscreen standout is Marin Ireland as Rose, who is so damn creepy and unsettling and yet isn’t out of place in the world we live in at the moment.  Shes certainly not someone Id like as a work colleague that’s for sure.

Writer and Director Laura Moss comments: “I remember the impact Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein had on me when I first read it as a pre-teen. I was delighted, not only by the material, but by the fact that it was written by a woman from the Victorian era, and it wasn’t about manners, or marriage, but about elemental questions of life and legacy. 

This film has been gestating within me for a long time, and when it finally came out as a screenplay in my thirties, it was infused with the anxieties of my particular stage of life. The fear of the transformational nature of giving birth, of a potential loss of identity, led me to craft a story of two very different mothers.” 

Directed by Laura Moss (Eureka!), Written by Laura Moss & Brendan J. O’Brien (Fry Day) 

Starring Marin Ireland (Eileen) Judy Reyes (Scrubs), Breeda Wool (National Treasure: Edge of History) and A.J Lister (Challengers) 

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