Rebirth

I'd never heard of this, but watched it hoping I had come across some indie zombie gem. Lol. Having no prior knowledge of it helped with my almost immediate surprise that this appeared to be a remake of the original Night of the Living Dead. As it turns out, it's less a remake and more a parody that doesn't work. The primary character has the makings of some fun, but it doesn't work either. Roger Conners, also the director and writer, in this role is clearly playing the Barbara character and gives a very similar lame performance as the original, which I assume was intentional?! As in the original, we have again our black hero, our basement dwellers, our sickly child, a similar dreary ending, etc., etc. What we don't have is any quality. The one key change in this rendition is that the Barbara character is now a very effeminate gay man who is called a boy throughout the film despite Connors clearly being in his 30's. As a gay man I will add that I found his depiction a bit offensive, though I will say that his take on Barbara is fairly accurate though it does not work as drama or parody. The writing is horrible, the relationship between this gay Barbara and the black hero is baffling, but it is the first zombie movie I've seen with full frontal male nudity on a hot man, so there is that if it's of interest. I did like the opening credits. This is a really bad movie.

I stumbled upon the 2020 movie "Rebirth" here in 2021, and with it being a zombie movie, of course I needed no persuasion to sit down and watch it. I should, however, perhaps have read the movie's synopsis prior to watching it.

Why? Well, "Rebirth" turned out to be a remake or reinvention of the classic George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead"; a movie that have been remade a couple of times already before. So this 2020 remake was fully and utterly unnecessary. Yet, I still sat through it.

I must say that "Rebirth" from writer and director Roger Conners was a bitter pill to swallow. First of all, the fact that it was a remake of a movie that had already been remade before was just pointless. And then Roger Conners went and opted to replace the Barbara character from the original movie with a gay guy named Adam. What? Seriously? Yeah, that was just utter rubbish. This whole political correctness that sweeps through Hollywood is just laughable.

Then there were the thing with the glowing eyes of the zombies. What was that all about? It just made no sense, and it just made the movie come off as being more rubbish and as a joke. It was so hard to take it serious with this. And the fact that the zombies were making growling noises that no human would be able to vocally produce just didn't help to sell the movie either.

The acting in the movie were sort of adequate, for the most parts. Mind you, you are not in for amazing performances here, nor will you see any Award winning performances in the midst of the performers here either.

Visually then the movie was sort of a swing and a miss. The majority of the zombie make-up and effects was just barely passable, so there wasn't much of any meat here for us gore fans, pardon the pun.

While I managed to sit through this ordeal, then "Rebirth" is a movie that came and went without as much as a groan or a bite. And it failed utterly to leave a lasting mark on the zombie genre at large. I am not going to be sitting down to watch "Rebirth" a second time, nor is it a movie that I would recommend any zombie fan to rush out and get their hands on.

My rating of "Rebirth" lands on a three out of ten stars. It was a completely unnecessary remake, and one that failed to deliver much of a bite at that.

Don't waste your time on this. I couldn't even stand the first few lines. Nauseating. Sorry.

It was too hard to take seriously when a guy keeps referring to another man his own age as "kid" and "child". This dude is at least 30 and everyone is treating him as if he is 10. Even consoling him when he sobs in fear, whining that he wants to go home. Not sure if he's supposed to be mentally handicapped and that's why? It was just funny to see and the zombies are hilariously bad with glowing eyes. The rev was a huge downer, not gonna lie, currently halfway through and can't wait for him to die. Didn't realize this was a remake, nor have I seen the original so not sure if it's supposed to be serious or funny. It's definitely funny and the acting isn't bad.

It's a remake of Night of the Living Dead. But Barbara is replaced with Adam, who seems to be based off of stereotypes of gay men from 80's comedies, and is called "boy" and "kid" (despite being in his 30s) and treated like he has an intellectual disability or something (at least Barbara was clearly in shock). Ben has been about 15% "urbanized", as evidenced by his dialogue (I miss Duane Jones, or Tony Todd channelling Mr. Jones, and wish Aswan Harris's take skewed closer to one of those). Harry's made even worse than before by making him racist and homophobic (in case it wasn't clear we're not supposed to root for him), turning a creepy guy who might be concerned for his family into a two dimensional prop. And of course, you can't have a Christian villain in a horror movie not curse, but Harry is practically a fountain of profanity (when he's not menacing our gay anti-hero). So yay? Preppy Johnnie is now Face Tat Johnnie, Helen... Helen actually gets some depth and an actress who can carry the material, and is honestly one of the few high point of the film in terms of quality and creativity. The remaining characters are just kind of there filling the original roles, with a new "not all old white men from the country are jerks" character, that otherwise serves no function than to remind the audience that not all old white men from the country are jerks (which, aside from "Tucker and Dale vs Evil" hasn't really been done much).

As for the zombies... they're slow, they're killed by headshots, they growl in a way that'd be more effective if the sound balancing was better. And their eyes glow for some unexplained reason, which I'm fine with in theory. I'm not going to argue over how many buttons a leprechaun's jacket can have, and I won't argue over whether or not fictional monsters can have glowing eyes. In practice though, I think it was done to try and help add menace to zombies compensation for their often (but not always!) mediocre make up effects. Seeing a bunch of zombie eyes "blink on" as they close to attack is almost creepy. The movies "Demons" and "Demons 2" made it work okay through practical effects, shame it looks so cheap here due to CG.

But character tweaks aside, this is the kind of zombie movie that couldn't afford zombies smashing windows (or heroes barricading said windows). The kind of film where right before the heroes open a door to see how many zombies are outside, one of them looks out the windows of said door (meanwhile, in a later scene we discover the house has a balcony, so there's that). The kind of film that really needed someone to ask the director/writer "do you really need this shot?" and "why do they throw away their torches when they know the dead are scared of fire" and "do we really need to be reminded that Adam is off screen being worthless, again?" Honestly, a good chunk could be forgiven if Ben turned to Helen and explained "I have a cousin who is gay, they just need a little help. Hey buddy, would you like a juice box? I got the straw ready for you."

Seriously though, there's some genuinely good ideas here, but the execution would've benefitted a lot by someone doing good storyboards beforehand (even stick figures are fine!), and then allowing someone to come in and challenge the weaker aspects of the film. And that's ignoring the issues due to budget limits.