Birth / Rebirth (2 Stars)

This is the 31st film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

There are certain things I don't like in films. One thing I can't stand is hospital operations, especially if they look realistic. That's exactly the problem that I have: the realism. I don't mind seeing heads chopped off or limbs severed in horror films. I know it's fake. But when I see hospital operations, they look like they could be really happening. I don't have the stomach for it.

Dr. Rose Casper is a hospital pathologist who wants to find a cure for death. She steals dead bodies from work so she can experiment with them at home. One of the dead bodies is the daughter of Celie, a maternity nurse in the same hospital. Officially, the body has been transferred from the hospital to an organisation for organ donations, but Celie knows enough about the way the hospital works to confront Dr. Casper at home. She finds her daughter alive, though in a weak state. She needs regular supplies of foetal tissue to get well. The two women work together to get what they want.

But there are repeated operations in hospital. The director says that she's based the film on the story of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel, but it's only very loosely based on the novel's premise, and there's no similarity with the film versions. "Birth/Rebirth" is an ugly film with lots of blood.