Birth/Rebirth

A morgue technician and a grieving mother reinventing Frankenstein in an apartment, with none of the theatrics and all of the ethics.

Rose harvests tissue and is working on a reanimation protocol. Celie's six-year-old daughter dies of bacterial meningitis. Rose takes the body. Celie finds out and, instead of calling the police, asks what she needs.

Laura Moss makes it a two-hander about two women who are both prepared to do appalling things, one out of clinical obsession and one out of love, and the film declines to rank them.

It is quiet, procedural and shot in cold institutional light, and the horror is entirely in what the maintenance of the child requires and where they source it.

Marin Ireland and Judy Reyes are both superb.

The final act asks a question about what a mother will do and answers it without flinching.