Review | Reborn movie review: Eddie Cheung, Venus Wong in dull Hong Kong doll ‘horror’
Danny Pang’s Reborn, about a grieving couple who adopt a doll said to be possessed by their son’s spirit, is neither scary nor unsettling
2/5 stars
In Hong Kong filmmaker Danny Pang Fat’s supernatural drama Reborn, Venus Wong Man-yik plays a young mother whose grief over her deceased son (Lokman Leung) takes a bizarre form when she adopts a rag doll said to be possessed by the seven-year-old boy’s spirit, much to the chagrin of her husband (Eddie Cheung Siu-fai).
While the toy is meant to serve as a surrogate, the film it inhabits proves a poor substitute for genuine horror. Curiously unwilling to plumb the psychological depths its premise hints at, Reborn (also titled Deadly Doll) offers instead a superficial portrait of loss that is neither scary nor unsettling.
The emphasis on family love over visceral thrills in Reborn may partially be a reflection of Pang’s own sombre, real-life circumstances; the film was reportedly made when he was on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of his wife’s costly cancer treatments.