Sundance Review: Laura Moss’ Midnight Section Film ‘Birth/Rebirth’

deadline.com:

Following in the slipstream of Shudder’s surprise hit Skinamarink, Laura Moss’ birth/rebirth is a similarly non-conforming horror, this time one that prioritizes its intriguing but somewhat underdeveloped conceit above the traditional trappings of its genre.

Very loosely inspired by Mary Shelley’s 19th century novel Frankenstein, the film centers on a decidedly post-modern Prometheus: by making its central scientist female rather than male, Moss’ feature debut short-circuits the usual blunt clichés of a crazy scientist bent on defying nature and instead enters the realm of David Cronenberg’s ’80s heyday with its focus on the human anatomy as a battleground for shady ethics.

Of all Cronenberg’s body horrors, however, the touchstone here seems to be 1988’s Dead Ringers, one of the director’s most sophisticated and least gory, dealing with notions of duality in the story of doomed identical twin gynecologists.

Moss touches on similar ideas of yin and yang here, starting with the character of Rose (Marin Ireland), a withdrawn, socially awkward pathologist whose bizarre private life suggests she is Up To No Good, jerking off random strangers in public restrooms and saving the sperm for some obviously nefarious purpose.