Reborn
By: Brittney-Jade Colangelo
1 ½ Skulls or 3/10

One would assume if a filmmaker creates a complete debacle of a film and receives poor reviews, that the filmmaker would move on and start a completely new project. It’s safe to say that Craig McMahon is convinced he’s holding on to a golden idea and we must suffer because of it. Reborn aka Machined Reborn is supposed to be a sequel to the ungodly trash pile that is Machined, but sequel is not the optimal word in this situation. This film is less of a sequel and more of a remake of the previous film with a bigger budget, and a little less of back story on a killing character that the audience doesn’t care much about in the first place.

After the-worst-character-ever-made Cade quits his job as an engineer (let’s assume he makes big bucks) and buys a piece of property to start an auto shop in the desert without telling his wife (that he’s also not trained to run by the way) he assumes his life in the middle of the desert is going to be brilliant. Little does he know, he’s bought a piece of property that once belonged to crazed killer Motorman Dan! The audience is lucky our villain is so scary his name even rhymes. Motorman is a killer by nature, but he also creates these android, robot, killer men. The idea seems really interesting on paper, but on the screen it just translates to a step above the kid in Grandma’s Boy who wants metal legs. Who knew there were so many ripe candidates to kill off by robot men in the middle of the desert?

This film is an absolute clusterfrack with plot points, cutaways, characters, and purpose. Characters die off before the audience can even remember their names and there is an overabundance of unnecessary and poorly timed blackouts. What is so frustrating about this film is that it is supposed to be a sequel, but it doesn’t help the audience understand little to anything about how the killer returned from the dead. That may have worked for slashers back in the day, but that was because it was universally accepted that the characters just never died. The same rule does not apply for this film. There’s also an actor who was in the first film who comes back in the second film and plays a different character. That’s about as logical as bringing back Deborah Myers after she’s been killed off. The only way for the audience to keep up with anything from the first film that was left out in this film is either by reading the back of the DVD or googling it online. While that may be fine and dandy, it’s a sign of a poor script…which our director also thought up.

McMahon also completely rapes the use of gore and drilling into people. The first time the drill went through an arm it was a little off putting, but after seeing it so many times, it became less scary and more unoriginal. The reason films like Saw or Hostel were so successful with this over-the-top gore was because they were versatile in the use of torture. This film is just continuing to add salt to an already existing wound. Reborn is definitely an upgrade to its predecessor but an upgrade from garbage is still trash.