There are many hard and fast rules in horror. Don’t run up the stairs when there is literally an exit door to freedom. Never investigate that strange noise in the basement or attic. Leave that weird book, relic, or box wherever the hell you found it. And never, ever try to resurrect a person. It will always end badly. That’s the lesson that everyone learns the hard way in birth/rebirth, a film about a morgue technician who resurrects a dead child for experiments. The trailer for birth/rebirth is super unsettling and quickly goes off the rails.
We meet Dr. Caper (Marin Ireland), a morgue tech who is not following the rules when it comes to disposing of corpses in the birth/rebirth trailer. Instead, she’s been taking them home and conducting her own Frankenstein experiments. She’s found the perfect candidate, a little girl named Lila (AJ Lister), who died from an infection. However, we learn in the trailer that birth/rebirth‘s Dr. Caper (Frankenstein) doesn’t realize that Lila’s mom Celie (Judy Reyes), is also in the medical field. They even work at the same hospital. Celie quickly catches onto Dr. Caper’s suspicious activity and discovers to her horror, that Dr. Caper has Lila’s missing body in her apartment. Even more shocking, Lila is alive (but unconscious) on a respirator. The two form a terse alliance as Celie wants her daughter to live while Dr. Caper seems to have more nefarious goals.
At the end of the birth/rebirth trailer, Lila wakes up, but she’s no longer herself. What will they do with this version of Lila? What are Dr. Caper’s ultimate goals? There are so many ways this film can go, but the general premise tips its hat at Mary Shelley’s infamous tale, much like The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, albeit through the exploration of motherhood. Fans will have to wait and see when birth/rebirth hits theaters on August 18.