Reborn 2019

The film stars Stav Almagor, Leah Tonic, and Ori Shani, a trio whose talents thread through a quietly unnerving supernatural thriller.

In a hospital morgue, an electrical surge courses through a stillborn baby, reviving the infant in a moment that feels both clinical and uncanny. The newborn, named Tess, awakens with the uncanny ability to manipulate electricity, a power that grows along with her sense of isolation. A troubled attendant named Ken, who secretly photographs deceased bodies, steps into Tess’s life in a forbidden, almost sinister way, raising her as a sister and sheltering the truth of her “birth” from her. Tess clings to the belief that she was abandoned by mistake, not that the world ever considered her truly dead.

On Tess’s sixteenth birthday, her quiet world shatters. She stumbles upon Ken’s hidden photos, and his fury erupts into violence. Tess’s nascent power flares in response, and she kills him in a moment of raw, uncontrollable force. The act marks a turning point: Tess is no longer a frightened survivor but a dangerous force she struggles to understand.

Driven by a need to locate her biological mother, Lena O’Neill, Tess seeks out the actress turned drama coach, hoping to find a place in Lena’s life. She adopts a patient, almost methodical approach, trying to blend into Lena’s circle by entering the group of drama students Lena mentors. What begins as a quiet infiltration becomes a tense exchange of trust and suspicion as Tess learns to read people and to shield herself from exposure.

As Tess grows more confident with her abilities, she crosses lines she never anticipated. She confronts and kills Dr. Ince, the physician who helped deliver her, followed by the elimination of Lena’s agent Dory and one of Lena’s students, Gia. Each death tightens the net around Tess and pulls Lena deeper into a web of fear, moral ambiguity, and protective loyalty.

The investigation tightens when the police, led by Detective Fox, connect Tess to the string of killings. Tess finally faces Lena with a frank confession about who she is and where she came from. Lena, stunned and emotionally reeling, is warned by Fox about the looming danger Tess represents; yet Tess cannot bear the thought of losing her mother a second time and clings to Lena in a desperate plea to keep her close. The standoff ends tragically when Fox arrives and shoots Tess, ending a life that had only just begun to understand its own power.

In the film’s closing images, Lena and Fox lay flowers at Tess’s grave, a grim reminder of mortality and consequence. Just as the scene seems to settle into quiet, a decomposing arm bursts from the soil and seizes Lena, a moment that feels like a nightmare she cannot escape. The camera then cuts to Lena waking in bed, revealing that this entire sequence is actually a scene from a movie Lena stars in: Darklands, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, a meta-layer that leaves viewers questioning what is real within the story and what is staged for the screen.