Birthrite

Birthrite is a solid attempt at a pregnancy horror film, while not hitting most of the marks. The film stars Alice Kremelberg as Wren, a woman who is bequeathed a home in the New York boonies, and with her long-term girlfriend Maya, decides to move into the house to start their family. Once the two settle in, Wren starts showing a baby bump, and the pair goes to a fertility doctor who, as it turns out, had close ties with her relative who died. As they settle into the house, we see a lot of scenes attempting to set the creepy mood to varying success levels, like a lady staring at them from the yard. The next scene is of a child who came for a piano lesson with Wren, and during the session, she gets a call from the girl’s mother informing her that she had to cancel the lesson, so who was the girl?

Before Wren can answer the question, the girl runs into the forest surrounding the home. Wren then has a dream about her baby being taken by a cult, only to wake up and needing to be rushed to the ER due to an apparent miscarriage, but the doctor tells Maya that there was no baby, and it is possible that there was Pseudocyesis (false pregnancy). This leads to the psychological horrors of it all: Was she actually pregnant, and was her baby taken, or was it all in her head? The two decide to have a wedding and try to have another baby, during which time they befriend Paul, their neighbor, and the friendly, shy librarian. One thing leads to another in the usual horror movie fashion: the lead suspects that her dream was real, goes to the library, and it just so happens that the local library has the ancient text describing witchcraft in the area. After she starts digging, her friends and red herrings die suspiciously. The story ends in the revelation that the witches are real and trying to steal Wren’s babies for rituals.

This film tried to mesh the subgenre of folk horror and pregnancy horror together, which usually does go well together. The tropes of witches stealing children go back in folklore in memoria. I didn’t feel like this film had much to add to these tropes; it felt like he just wanted to make this style of movie without really having much to say about it. In one of the supplemental interviews, Partridge talks about how this film is about women’s bodily autonomy and what happens when someone chooses for herself about pregnancy, which was in the film, but it didn’t feel like it was explored that much. The two absolutely terrifying scenes in the film were the miscarriage scene and the scene where her fertility doctor visits and drugs her in an attempt to do something to her unborn baby. The motives of the witches were confusing; I also wish they had more lore involved in why this was happening in this particular town.

Overall, this movie had some pretty good performances with the two leads, but Birthrite wasn’t the best of either folk horror or pregnancy horror, and the film follows every predictable horror trope of the last 40 years. Its. If the movie is totally bad, it’s just a quotidian horror film that gets released every year. It was an entertaining watch if you stumbled upon it on Shudder or another streaming service, and I would say I can see diehard horror fans maybe enjoying it. It’s worth a watch, but I would hold off on purchasing, though.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray 
Going into labor for the benefit of our physical media collections, Brainstorm Media and OCN Distribution delivers Birthrite to 1080p Blu-ray. This Blu-ray disk is housed in a clear case featuring very good artwork as the cover. The disc also comes with a booklet featuring an essay by Rebecca Sayce. If you ordered from Vinegar Syndrome you could snag a slick exclusive slipcover. 

The visuals in this release are fine. This copy is shown in 1080p, and the picture is clear; you can see everything that happens on screen easily. There's no muddying at all; however, the cinematography of this film is not the best and appears pretty sterile. This film falls in the camp of new horror movies that are technically fine but just lack a certain vision. I know in the behind the scenes supplements, they talk about shooting on location in the producer's hometown, so there is a lot of love in the locations they shot; however, it does just end up looking like a tourism video made by the chamber of commerce at some points. Overall, the cinematography could be moodier, but you can see everything going on during the film.

The audio, like the visuals, is average. There’s nothing really bad to say about it; it’s presented in DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0, which makes the dialogue come out clear, and there’s no muffling of the audio in both quiet and loud scenes of the film. Again, like the visuals its competent without being particularly revelatory or interesting. While there's nothing bad to say about it, these audio options didn't really stand out either. Just a solid job all around that serves the film's needs without much flash.

The supplements included in this release are ok but not a large selling point for this release. There is a good essay included with the disc that covers Maternal autonomy and horror, which is a good read that provides context for pregnancy horror films. Behind the scenes is interesting, but not great, and the deleted scenes are also interesting to see what they left on the cutting room floor. Other than that, the supplements aren’t the selling point for this set.

• Trailer (HD 1:51)
• Brainstorm Medi (HD 9:31)
• Deleted Scenes (HD 4:27)

Birthrite offers decent performances from the leads; however, the execution of trying to merge Pregnancy Horror with Folk Horror in this particular film ends up somewhat muddled. I feel like this film would be better if they focused on the pregnancy aspect because the two most horrifying scenes of the film are the miscarriage scene and the doctor drugging Wren to mess with her pregnancy. The folk elements are very quotidian, without really attempting anything new to say within the genre. The A/V passes muster without much flash and fanfare, and the extras leave a bit to be desired. I do really like the cover of the release. I think it promises a really good horror film. It might not be worthy of a blind buy without seeing it first - Worth A Look