Silent Rebirth starts off with some shaky camera work and filming of tree tops. That brings me back to the days when I used to watch endless independent horror flicks. There was more than one that focused more on the trees than on an actual plot or even bloody special effects.
But it doesn’t stay that way for long. Suddenly, we see a house, and the suggestive music and sounds come along. We see someone lying in the ground wrapped in plastic with a narrative voice describing something nihilistically poetic for us. Now I’m interested.
The sounds and music, along with the camera is starting to hide behind some branches, making me feel very voyeuristic. It feels like I’m there and that I’m not supposed to witness the scenery playing out before me. Are we witnessing a birth in some metaphorical way? The imagery is gritty and not crystal sharp and I like that. It makes me feel that it’s a little more “real”.
I think the metaphorical continuation enhances the feeling of a birth or someone who wakes up and is lost in the world. That’s what a newborn is anyway, right? It’s exciting, and I’m curious about what is going to happen, something that is quite unusual these days. The more movies you seen, the harder it is to get really surprised and to feel anything at all really. At least the deep, thrilling feeling Silent Rebirth produces in my mind.
Silent Rebirth, as it continues with more nihilistic poetry, proves that you don’t need millions of dollars to make an effective film. You just need to know how to make it work. And I’ve always said that low-budget filmmakers are way more resourceful, because they have to be. But they also have the benefit of having a real, devoted niche fan base that loves just that kind of filmmaking. The ones who find beauty in the unusual and strange and don’t need mainstream filmmaking to feel satisfied. In fact, it’s quite often the opposite.
I like Silent Rebirth; it makes me wonder how in the world these talented people can make something that powerful with such small means. And since there is some mystery involved as well, it’s not really clear to me how to interpret all the imagery, which creates questions in me I didn’t know I needed the answer for.
Silent Rebirth can be interpreted in many ways, I think. Some are more direct than others. Maybe revenge, maybe the afterlife. It definitely seems to be something sinister, but it could also be a complete metaphor for something else. In either case, I really enjoyed Silent Rebirth; it might just be a story without a beginning nor end. The closing credit gives a clue, though.
