The Sundance Movie Competition’s Midnight sidebar launched with a stomach-churning (actually, on-screen for actual) meditation on excessive motherhood with the premiere of Start/Rebirth.

“That is the place issues get nasty,” stated one of many Midnight programmers, Charlie Sextro. No, he was not referring to the person who introduced in a rack of BBQ ribs from the grocery retailer into the screening, though that picture does offer you perception into the sort of ambiance one can count on at midnight.

This was the primary yr the competition kicked off the midnight part on the Rey Theatre, after years of screenings on the Library Theatre. And whereas some years Midnight films could be raucous and sweat-inducing affairs, relying on the providing, this opening was shaded with tragic grotesqueness of grounded mad science.

Directed by Laura Moss, who additionally co-wrote the script with Brendan J. O’Brien, the film facilities on a mom and OBGYN nurse who loses her daughter, and a pathologist making her personal aspect experiments, who crew as much as convey the mom’s baby again to life. A poignant however disturbing respectable into what it takes to convey life into this world follows. The film runs the spectrum of the invasive processes girls are put by way of, with up shut appears at blood amassing, tissue harvesting, miscarriage, and one too many amniocentesis procedures.

That the ladies are budding Frankensteins shouldn’t be an accident because the novel by Mary Shelley was a particular affect.  

“I learn Frankenstein after I was too younger and I beloved it,” stated Moss on the film’s post-Q&A. “I beloved that it was a uniquely feminine voice and the concept of a feminine Dr. Frankenstein was the impetus for it.”

Motherhood is the subject that attracted lots of the actresses to the undertaking, together with Judy Reyes, finest identified for taking part in Nurse Carla Espinosa on the long-running comedy Scrubs. “I used to be like, ‘Fuck, one other nurse?,” she stated about her first being approached, “After which I learn it.”

“Whereas I used to be having that actual life child, I felt prefer it was an insane horror film,” stated Breeda Wool, who performs a pregnant mom who sadly has plasma that’s wanted by the disturbed medical doctors. “You go from being an everyday particular person strolling round on the earth to a physique that’s doing scary issues. I felt like there was an abscnece of girls filmmakers within the canon for the final 50, 75 years which can be making tales about that scary alien shifting in your physique and the scariness of constructing that life after which having that life probably die. And that very same yr, very magically I obtained this script, and I used to be like, ‘Oh it’s occurring. Girls are making about this shit!’”

Queerness was additionally an theme in entrance of and behind of the cameras. Reyes stated that “queer power” ran by way of the manufacturing and that that “Seventy-five, 80 p.c” of the solid and crew was made up girls, queer, and various expertise.

“This film was fairly queer from the start,” stated Moss, who added she deliberately centered on making a co-parenting dynamic between her two lead characters.

A.J. Lister performs that re-animated daughter and whereas the younger actress was available to say hello earlier than the unspooling of the film because the clock struck 12, she was lengthy gone two hours later. Moss stated nice care was taken in dealing with the kid on a set that handled specific materials and nudity, amongst different issues, and she or he wrote a letter/manifesto on easy methods to deal with her on set, together with making Lister’s mom an energetic accomplice.  

However even she and producer Mali Elfman, additionally on stage with producer David Grove Churchill Viste, might have underestimated Lister’s willingness to leap into scenes. Her first day concerned mendacity useless in a physique bag and the filmmakers needed to be cautious. However the teen dove proper in, actually.

“She jumped into that factor,” recalled Elfman. “’Are you okay?’ we stated. ‘Yeah, that is nice!’… We had been able to be so cautious and she or he was actually excited.”

Start/Rebirth will debut on horror streaming service Shudder later this yr.