What begins as an annual visit to their family grave-site quickly becomes a night of sheer terror as two brothers are unexpectedly forced to fight back against a sudden onslaught of violent ... Read allWhat begins as an annual visit to their family grave-site quickly becomes a night of sheer terror as two brothers are unexpectedly forced to fight back against a sudden onslaught of violent assailants.What begins as an annual visit to their family grave-site quickly becomes a night of sheer terror as two brothers are unexpectedly forced to fight back against a sudden onslaught of violent assailants.
Ben Benzino
- Russo
- (as Benny Benzino)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Featured reviews
...when folks who don't really know how to make movies make a movie. They end up Dunning-Krugering themselves into producing messes like "Rebirth," a scratch-and-dent remake of the seminal zombie classic, George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." It's tone deaf in almost every respect, sad to say, and I have to put it on the quaking shoulders of faux auteur Roger Connors, who in writing/directing/co-producing and starring in the benighted project, has mystifyingly chosen to put a gay slant on things that plays poorly and adds nothing to the story. I'm not going to pick at the corpse; others have already done that here. I simply mean to caution potential viewers against any expectations of quality filmmaking, because you won't find any. "Rebirth" is as pure an example of Sturgeon's Revelation as you might ask.
TL/DR: Low return entertainment even if you don't value your precious, irreplaceable time.
TL/DR: Low return entertainment even if you don't value your precious, irreplaceable time.
Rebirth is essentially just Mr. George Romero's Night of the Living Dead, but with a few twists and changes to make it slightly different from the original. Nevertheless, Rebirth is still a good movie in and of itself, and it's entertaining to watch, even though some people might find the glowing eyes unsettling. I didn't mind, though, because it didn't detract from the plot, and I wasn't upset about Barbara being changed into a boy named Adam, played by Roger Connors, because Ben was the one who really forced himself on the story. I also liked that they didn't alter Harry, which would have been a bit too strange if they had, the harry character pushing an important subliminal message and all. In general, I liked it.
Don't waste your time on this. I couldn't even stand the first few lines. Nauseating. Sorry.
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.
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.
It's amazing just how clueless some people are and I say that with absolute derision because of all the nonsense in the reviews about groundbreaking commentary on government blah and racial and sexual prejudice. This movie is not new the themes in it aren't a daring and bold in any way because it's a shot for shot remake of 50 year old George Romero classic. Stupid stupid most likely millennials who believe the world began the moment they were born. This is the most famous Zombie movie of all time and the only thing that's different is the female lead is replaced by a man. Seriously what the hell is wrong with this group of humans that leads to such a huge gap in knowledge that they aren't aware of NOTLD. The age old "what's wrong with the youth of today" from the past is never been more true then right now. Stupid completely self centered spoiled brats. Movie if it was a completely new idea would be passable this is made a monstrosity by the lazy nature of ripping off the classic made worse by the morons who think this is a new idea.
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Night of the Living Dead: Rebirth
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $12,000 (estimated)
- Runtime
- 1h 39m(99 min)
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content