DIRECTOR: JULIAN RICHARDS | SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL MAHIN | STARRING: BARBARA CRAMPTON, KAYLEIGH GILBERT, MICHAEL PARE, RAE DAWN CHONG, CHAZ BONO | RELEASE DATE: MAY 11TH
Even considering factors like minimum budget and atrocious casting, Reborn is a revelatory, even uplifting experience: if this bunch got to make a movie someone thought was worth distributing, surely anybody can!
A Hallmark family drama at heart, the ‘creative’ team borrows freely from Psycho and Carrie, down to that seminal jump scare. But they botch the execution so badly it becomes laughable. Just imagine hiring Chaz Bono to play a Norman Bates-type. The movie seems to spend its entire budget in the first five minutes: Chaz Bono is a creepy morgue attendant who likes to take photos of naked corpses. He’s interrupted mid-session by a crying baby believed a stillborn. Predictably, creepy Chaz takes the infant home (small mercies: it’s not A Serbian Film situation.) Cut to 16 years later. The baby is now a teenager (Gilbert), anxious to find her mom. Chaz Bono is not very forthcoming, so a confrontation ensues. In low-rent X-Men fashion, the girl discovers she can control electricity. This spell bad news for store-brand Norman Bates.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Lena (Crampton), a washed-up actress angling for a comeback, is told psychological trauma is keeping her from stardom. Her shrink identifies the cause as not having mourned the stillborn baby she had sixteen years ago. Wait a minute… Having grown up without role models or human interaction beyond a psycho and his ‘mother’, the girl doesn’t take rejection well and acts out every time a supporting character gets in her way.
Crampton singlehandedly turns Reborn into camp. The actress – who has been elevating genre films since the ’80s– takes her role seriously and provides the modicum of credibility every camp movie requires. Michael Paré as the only detective in Los Angeles (all murders are assigned to him) is presumably in on the joke. That, or he’s doing a bad impression of Nick Nolte.
The killings, often the saving grace of terrible horror films, are poorly staged to the point of hilarity. Two rely on fade-to-black and another hopes you are gullible enough to buy a young actress’ spastic movements as electrocution.
There’s little about Reborn worth your time. The only real mystery is how director Julian Richards convinced an iconic (if past his prime) filmmaker to make a cameo. The scene is so hokey, it doesn’t even reflect well on the famous auteur; which is typical of the whole movie – nothing works as it should.
