Horror makes us confront uncomfortable truths.  I suspect Birth/Rebirth might be the kind of movie to contain triggers for some folks.  I’ve watched enough body horror to be somewhat desensitized, but I was uncomfortable at a point or two.  The movie follows two female medical professionals—Morales, a maternity nurse, and Dr. Casper, a pathologist.  Overworked, Morales feels she’s not spending adequate time with her five-year-old daughter, Lila.  Then the unthinkable happens; her daughter suddenly dies from meningitis while she’s at work.  Casper, who works in the same hospital, handles the corpse of the young girl, but Morales learns the doctor has taken her home and, more than that, brought her back from the dead.  Horror fans know that reanimation is always problematic.  In order to discuss this, however, I may need to resort to spoilers.

Casper, ever since her own youth, has been working on regeneration.  She’s somewhat emotionally disconnected from others, doing this work for the sake of science.  Morales, however, refuses to leave Casper’s house once she learns her daughter is there and alive.  The two work together to supply the serum needed to maintain Lila.  She begins to speak and walk again, but the serum, derived from stem cells, requires a very specific profile that Casper has.  When an infection prevents Casper from conceiving (and providing the necessary tissue) Morales has to start taking amniotic fluid from another woman with the rare profile that matches Lila.  Until the other woman decides to change hospitals.  The story, which drew inspiration from Frankenstein, is sad, just as that book is.  A woman has to lose the same daughter twice, but that’s not the end of the story.

I think I’ll leave it there.  The tale raises ethical issues and probes the lengths we will reach not to let go of those we love.  The maternal bond may go as far as, if not murder, manslaughter.  The bond is emotional and Casper works it for the science of regeneration.  If life can be introduced to apparently dead tissue, why shouldn’t it be?  But the result is never satisfying.  There is a permanent line between life and death that can’t be crossed, no matter the emotional need or scientific curiosity.  And yet.  And yet.  Birth/Rebirth takes us to this juncture and forces us to look.  And it makes the viewer wonder just how far they might go.  The answer might make a person squeamish.  But then, uncomfortable truths are like that.