Reviews
‘birth/rebirth’ Sundance Review – Two Outstanding Lead Performances Elevate “Frankenstein” Update
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (or, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus for purists) has been retold countless times in the 100+ years since its original publication, with many creators sticking to the tried and true formula and a select few opting instead to give the story a new spin. That’s just what screenwriters Laura Moss and Brendan J. O’Brien aim to do in birth/rebirth, a look at the lives of two women in the medical field who come together to defy death after one of them endures an unspeakable tragedy.
After the sudden death of her 6-year-old daughter Lila (A.J. Lister), maternity nurse Celie (Judy Reyes, Smile) is overcome with grief until she crosses paths with pathologist Rose (Marin Ireland), a cold, calculated woman who is far more interested in the corpses she examines than the living people in her life. After discovering a secret Rose keeps in her apartment, the two women join forces in an attempt to bring Celie’s daughter back to life.
birth/rebirth offers a motherly twist on the Frankenstein tale, though Moss and O’Brien are much more interested in the mad scientists themselves than they are the eponymous creature, making birth/rebirth more of a dramatic character study than an outright horror film. Yes, it delves deeper into the genre’s tropes as it moves into its third act, but its focus on the relationship between these two women is what sets it apart from other versions of this oft-old tale. Similarly, it’s Celie’s emotional connection to the creature itself that adds a new wrinkle to the formula. birth/rebirth dares to ask the question: how far will a mother go to ensure her daughter’s survival?
It cannot be understated how vital Reyes and Ireland are to the success of birth/rebirth. Any shortcomings in Moss and O’Brien’s script are overcome by these two outstanding performances. Reyes, reliable ever since her days on Scrubs, is the emotional core of the film. She grounds the more outlandish elements of the plot, her grief and desperation palpable. But as great as Reyes is (and she is great), it’s Ireland who runs away with the film. Already having proven herself in recent horror offerings like The Dark and the Wicked and The Empty Man, birth/rebirth offers yet another display of her talents.
There’s a surprising amount of humor to be found in birth/rebirth, with Ireland’s deadpan delivery juxtaposed with Reyes’ emotionality providing many of the film’s laughs. Rose seems to be coded as neurodiverse, and birth/rebirth mines a lot of humor out of her interactions with the people around her. It’s a welcome reprieve from the doom and gloom of the proceedings, but thankfully the humor never undercuts the drama.
Despite the occasional burst of humor, don’t expect birth/rebirth to pull any punches when it comes to the grisliness of the premise. After opening with a particularly gruesome overhead shot of an autopsy, it gifts us with several disturbingly gory scenes over the course of its runtime that will make any person shudder (a shot of Rose pulling a placenta out of a pregnant corpse’s belly is particularly upsetting). Mothers beware: this is a rough watch.
birth/rebirth does overstay its welcome a bit, with Moss struggling to maintain narrative momentum as the film shifts further into genre territory. This is not to say the film’s gory offerings don’t satisfy, it’s just that the relationship between Rose and Celie is so captivating that you wish the film would just stick with them, rather than barrel toward its inevitable conclusion.
Despite all of that, birth/rebirth remains a success. It’s a solid feature directorial debut for Moss, but mostly stands as a stellar showcase for these two actresses. Keep this one on your radar, folks.
birth/rebirth had its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and will stream on Shudder later this year.
Reviews
‘The Death of Robin Hood’ Review: Michael Sarnoski’s Ultra-Violent, Dark Subversion of Legend
Myth gets brutally dispatched in The Death of Robin Hood, A Quiet Place: Day One filmmaker Michael Sarnoski‘s dark, loose adaptation of the 17th-century ballad Robin Hood’s Death. The 13th-century outlaw gets a gritty makeover in a subversion of his legendary heroics, forcing a reckoning as Robin Hood seeks peace and death in his final days. Sarnoski’s deconstruction of popularized myth comes forged in shocking violence and poignant introspection, yielding another deeply affecting story of meeting death on your own terms.
The Death of Robin Hood bypasses rehashing the origins of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, instead introducing a grizzled brute who opens the film with a ruthless culling of a young girl seeking vengeance against the outlaw. It’s a downright gentle introduction to Hugh Jackson’s Robin, who only escalates the jaw-dropping carnage when reunited with righthand Little John (Bill Skarsgård) as they seek to reclaim Little John’s home and family from vengeance seekers. These early sequences set up a stark contrast to the Disney-fied legends; Robin Hood’s heroics have been grossly exaggerated compared to the blood debts his violent exploits have racked up over the decades, which in turn have made him a hunted man spanning generations.
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
Grave injuries from battle lands Robin on a remote island priory under the care of Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer, 28 Years Later), where the strange, idyllic community, an enigmatic leper (Murray Bartlett), and a traumatized young girl, Margaret (Faith Delaney), force him to confront his legacy.
Sarnoski, who writes and directs, makes the hero the villain in his adaptation, ensuring a deeply rewarding character arc. At every point in the film, Robin is openly, often actively, seeking death. The stroke of poetic beauty here is that his view of a worthy death seismically shifts from beginning to end. What’s a hero’s death? That answer deepens and evolves along with its “hero” in his waning years. All the impressive survival instincts and battle savagery can’t outmatch or outrun endless cycles of death and loss, after all, despite Robin’s attempts to shrug off his own myth over the years.
Those cycles of violence loom large as a constant threat as the aged outlaw finds himself surrounded by those directly impacted by his past. It breeds conflict, external and internal, reflected in tense encounters and tenuous alliances that let Robin’s humanity slowly slip through his hardened survivor’s shell. It’s the type of role with just enough similarities that’ll draw inevitable comparisons to Hugh Jackman’s stellar work on Logan, but the tenured actor quickly sets the emotionally and morally complex Robin apart, whose primal ruthlessness belies a surprising capacity for aching empathy.
Photo Credit: Aidan Monaghan/A24
While it’s Robin’s relationship with Sister Brigid that drives his final story to its soulful conclusion, it’s the unexpected friendship between the outlaw and the cautious Leper that has the greatest impact. A quiet conversation between the pair comes barbed with soul-shattering revelations, one that irrevocably alters Robin’s outlook while serving as one of the bolder myth revisions. Still, it’s Comer’s quiet heartbreak that yields the film’s biggest devastation.
Sarnoski depicts medieval life for all its cruelty and filth. Death is not remotely gentle in the 13th century; it’s downright nasty and vicious. Cinematographer Pat Scola captures it with startlingly dark realism and grit, but so, too, the breathtaking Northern Ireland landscape that provides this intimate tale with the scale of a sprawling epic.
The Death of Robin Hood removes the simple binary of heroes and villains, combining both into a complicated interrogation of myth itself. But the biggest magic feat is its demonstration of how myth-making and storytelling can heal even the most grievous wounds, and even provide peace if earned.
The Death of Robin Hood releases in theaters on June 19, 2026.
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