from the very beginning Birth/Rebirthyou know you’re in for a wild ride.
Director Laura Moss’s maternity horror film begins by thrusting the audience into the perspective of a distressed pregnant woman. I hear an ambulance siren. We then see a crowd of surgeons crowding around her on the operating table. Her trembling voice asks if she’s okay, but no one answers. They are too focused on saving her baby. While she was caring for her newborn child, she suffered a seizure and died.
Ever since Moss’s directorial debut premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, we’ve been reeling from its brutal yet eerily plausible opening sequence. Due to the fall of Roe vs. Wade, pregnant people across the United States are faced with the devastating reality that their personhood may be overshadowed by their unborn child.like an invisible mother Birth/RebirthJudging from the opening scene of “, they may be valued more as vessels than as humans.
It’s a brilliant way to set up one of the most notable maternity horror films of the past decade, but Moss takes the scene to even darker places with the third-act reveal. Although this scene is the beginning of the movie, it is not the beginning of the story.
what happens with Birth/Rebirth?
After this opening sequence, Birth/Rebirth It shows what happens to mothers and children. In doing so, Moss not only explains society’s disastrous indifference to the medical care of pregnant people, but also introduces her heroines. The mother’s body is being disposed of by the stoic mortuary technician Rose (boogeyman‘s marine ireland). The baby is being cared for by Celie, a warm obstetric nurse (Dolores Roach’s FearJudy Reyes).
main thread of Birth/Rebirth It depicts how these very different women bond over caring for different children. When Celie’s young daughter Lyra (AJ Lister) dies unexpectedly, Rose steals her body for her resuscitation experiments. She is a stranger at first, but once her resurrection of Rose is successful, both of her mothers become dedicated to doing anything to keep Lyra alive. And that means harvesting “fetal tissue” to concoct Rose’s special life-sustaining serum.
Initially, Rose used her own genetic material, becoming pregnant for this purpose and then causing a miscarriage. However, the infection causes complications and she is unable to become pregnant again. That means Lyra is running out of time unless she can get the ingredients some other way. Their Plan B becomes Emily (Breeda Wool), a pregnant patient who matches Lyla’s blood type. First, Celie falsifies “inconclusive” test results so that she can repeatedly steal the tissues she needs. But Emily, tired of her stress and tests, changed her medical provider, leaving Celie with no means of obtaining more materials from her.
what is the terrible secret Birth/RebirthThe opening scene?
The mothers try to find an alternative solution to the serum, but Lyra’s health begins to deteriorate. Celie cannot face losing her girlfriend again, so she is ready to do whatever it takes to save her. That means visiting Emily’s house. Or, more accurately, it means ambushing Emily, drugging her, causing her to have a seizure, and finally transporting Emily’s corpse to Rose’s department.
That opening scene wasn’t just some random pregnant woman encountering bad luck or an uncaring medical system. It was Emily, a funny and feisty pregnant woman, who was strategically killed by Celie in order to keep her own child alive. Moss shows us the opening scene again, this time showing Emily’s face and the traitorous Celie, who rides with her in the ambulance, watching her silently.
But even if the entire placenta is extracted from Emily’s body, it’s only a matter of time before more is needed.And this strict agreement between parent and child is what is weighing heavily on us. Birth/RebirthConclusion. Lila is fine. At this point. But what won’t her mother do for her child?
