Mar 25, 20202 min read

Reborn film review

★★

Directed by: #JulianRichards Written by: #MichaelMahin Starring: #BarbaraCrampton, #MichaelParé, #KayleighGilbert, #RaeDawnChong London Independent Film Festival Review by: #TaryllBaker

Reborn Movie Review

Somewhere between thriller and horror, Reborn takes a look into a world in which a stillborn baby can somehow reanimate... with superpowers. If you hadn’t realised already, this is a pretty ‘out there’ flick. It has some reasonably good action scenes, with some of the bloody deaths being quite cool to watch. Props to the visual effects team who did some splendid work — this is some of the best stuff I’ve seen in lower budget films. There’s a lot to like and appreciate visually, that’s for sure. Although it has its charms, notably found in some of the acting talent, Reborn doesn’t really thrill as much as you’d hope. It sets off on an entertaining enough journey, but due to some of the writing choices, it never really gets much of a chance to breathe. By the end, it all seems like a rush that perhaps ended too soon. But as B movies go, this is one of the better ones. It does feature an interesting score that works pretty well with the visuals. Simon Lambros creates a sort of electronic bed of sound for the more traditional strings to sweep over. Fusing together the two creates a mysterious and satisfying result, very similar to that of Danny Elfman’s style, but unique enough to become its own entity. The aforementioned cinematography by Brian Sowell is among these positives. Brian has worked on several bigger productions as additional camera operator, so here’s hoping we see him solely helm something brilliant in the future. To add, Barbara Crampton, Chaz Bono and Michael Paré were terrific at delivering the lines they were assigned. Perhaps the film could have been longer in order to flesh out their characters and give them some more room to explore, but alas. Kayleigh Gilbert has some solid moments sprinkled in there, but for much of the runtime it felt like a forced effort. However, she certainly looks the part. Her hair looking like she’d been hit with high voltage, though more likely just rubbed with a helium balloon. With a tinkered script and more carefully paced scenes, Reborn has the potential to be the fantastically thrilling and gory horror piece it set out to be.