Too Scary; Didn't Watch - Minisode: BIRTH/REBIRTH

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Sammy is flying solo today for a recap of her favorite horror movie of 2023...Birth/Rebirth. Streaming on Shudder.Check out our Patreon if you'd like to vote for our January recap, 2x bonus episodes a month and other additional content!Follow the show: @TSDWpodcast on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.Rate Too Scary; Didn’t Watch 5 Stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Emily, Henley, and Sammy.Advertise on Too Scary; Didn't Watch via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. This is a HeadGum Podcast. This is Emily, Henley, and Sammy, and you're listening to Too Scary, Didn't Watch. Hi, everyone. Hi everyone, welcome to Too Scary to Didn't Watch, the horror movie recap podcast for those

too scared to watch for themselves. I am Sammy, and I love watching scary movies, and so I watch them so that you don't have to. And it's just me today, another solo episode. Obviously missing my wonderful, perfect, beautiful co-hosts, Emily and Henley. But I did one of these episodes in October and I don't know, it was kind of fun. So I figured why not do it again? I, in October, obviously was watching a lot of horror movies and so talked about some of those that we didn't have a chance to get to on the podcast. And now I am watching more award season movies. And I don't know, I just thought you guys probably like movies in general. It doesn't have to be horror all the time, every time. Although I did still watch some horror movies as well that I will be talking about.

So if you listen to the October episode, it's going to be a similar structure. I am going to start with a recap of a horror movie that will be available on the main feed for everybody. And then I'm going to go into brief thoughts about a bunch of other movies I've watched in the last couple months. And that will be available on our Patreon at patreon.com slash TSDW podcast. So first, we're going to do we're going to recap, we're going to recap my my favorite horror movie of 2023 because I don't think that Henley would actually, I think this movie might kill her if she had to hear the recap. And so I loved it so much that I got ahead of myself and I told Emily everything that happened because I was too excited and then was like, well, damn, now I don't think we should do this as an episode because I have spoiled it all already.

So I'm just going to do it as a recap here because I loved it and I want to tell you guys about it. And that movie is Birth Rebirth. Came out this year, like I said, directed by Laura Moss, written by Laura Moss and Brendan J. O'Brien, starring Maren Ireland, Judy Reyes, AJ Lister, and Brenda Wool. And it is streaming on Shudder. And if you like horror movies and you haven't seen this movie or heard of this movie, I'd recommend watching it before listening to the recap. I didn't know too much about it other than it had to do with motherhood and perhaps some child-related horrors. And so if that's not your thing,

definitely stay away. But I love this movie and I love Maren Ireland. I like that she's just in more and more horror movies these days. I freaking love to see her. She was in a movie called The Dark and the Wicked that we get requested a lot. We'll have to do someday. She was in The Empty Man. She was in another movie that I'm going to talk about a little bit later from this year. I just love her. I watched most of Sneaky Pete. I fell off somewhere, but that's where I first saw her. And I just love her. I watched most of Sneaky Pete. I fell off somewhere, but that's where I first saw her. And I just love her. So no surprise that I loved her in this movie. But we've got a lot to get through today. So no trivia, no trailer. We are just going to get right into it. And as I mentioned, I will reiterate trigger warnings for child death, pregnancy related

horrible stuff. So if you're pregnant or have young kids, you know, proceed with caution. It's a pretty tough one in that respect. I'm going to go through it kind of faster than normal, but it will definitely get the whole story across. So we begin in an ambulance. It's hectic. We don't quite know what's happening. But through the EMTs discussions with each other, we're hearing, figuring out that it's a pregnant woman, that something has happened. We don't know what. She has her oxygen mask on. She looks very scared, doesn't know what's going on.

She's taken to the hospital and we're seeing her on an operating table. There's lots of blood. One of the nurses tells her, your baby's going to be okay. I promise you, your baby is going to be okay. And you hear the woman being operated on asking, but what about me? And the nurse gives this kind of nervous face, like she doesn't want to answer that as confidently. And then we cut to the mom, the pregnant woman, dead in the hospital morgue. So she did not survive, though her baby did. And we see one of our main characters, Rose, this is Maren Ireland, is the pathologist performing the autopsy on this woman. We go back to the nurse that had been trying to comfort that woman about that her baby was going to be okay. We see that nurse now is our other main character, Celia. This is Judy Reyes, who is Carla from Scrubs. I hadn't really seen her in anything since Scrubs, pretty much. And she's also

fucking amazing in this. Loved her as well. So she is the maternity nurse that has lost this patient. We see that she looks distraught and exhausted and just kind of broken down. exhausted and just kind of broken down. She picks up her daughter from the hospital daycare, and we find out that she's a single mom. She's taking her daughter home. Her daughter's name is Leela, and she just seems extremely overworked and run down and spread very thin. We go back to Rose, and her vibe is very brusque. She's really short with her coworkers. She has no bedside manner at all. After she's done with her autopsy, she goes to a bar and a guy hits on her. And it's pretty immediately clear that she's not interested in this guy. But for some reason that we don't really understand, she tells him that she's not interested in this guy. But for some reason that we don't

really understand, she tells him that she's interested in jerking him off in the bathroom. So he agrees and they go to the bathroom. She tells him to close his eyes while she jerks him off. And we see her pulling out what looks like sperm collection material. And like, she's going to be taking his sperm and his eyes are closed, but he's hearing some things being taken out of her purse and such and is about to look and she's like, don't look, don't look, I'll stop. If you look, I'll stop. So he finishes and she takes his semen, takes that sperm and leaves. It's very bizarre. And he's pretty freaked out by it as well. But she just she gets out of there and goes home. Rose has a pig named Muriel, a little pet pig. You're terrible, Muriel. We don't talk about Muriel's wedding enough for being such big fans of Toni Collette. Her pig's name is Muriel, and she hooks up this little IV bag of what looks like blood to the

pig. So this pig is under some sort of medical treatment that we don't know what that is yet. So she hooks the pig up to the blood and then goes into the bathroom with her jar of sperm and inseminates herself. The next morning as Celia is getting ready for work, The next morning as Celia is getting ready for work, Lila has a fever. She's really not feeling well. And Celia, as always, is very rushed and has no time and so runs over to the neighbor's house to ask if she can leave Lila there. And the neighbor agrees, says, of course, and she's handing Lila over. Lila's crying and saying, you know, mommy, no, I don't want to. I don't want to. And Celia is very impatient with her and just kind of snaps at her and says, you know, too

bad you're staying or something. And Leela's crying, but Celia's got to go to work. So she leaves abruptly, has a very busy day. And Pauline is calling her and saying, it seems like things are getting a little bit worse, but I'm keeping an eye on it. And if it gets worse again, I'll call you. So we're keeping an eye on Lila's illness. And somewhere in Celia's busy day, she drops her cell phone in the toilet. And there's kind of a sense of relief, I think, in this where she's a little bit happy to not be bothered for a day. But we're all feeling pretty stressed about her not being able to get updates on her

daughter. So she, sure enough, comes home from work that night and the neighbor and Lila are not there. She goes into the house and sees that there is bloody vomit on the floor. bloody vomit on the floor. And there's a note that says Leela, very sick, took her to hospital. So Celia rushes back to the hospital. And while this is happening, this happens really quickly. And we see Rose getting a call. She's at the hospital in the morgue. And Leela is brought down to her dead body. So Leela has died. Rose sees on her chart that she is an organ donor. Rose is, again, her demeanor is really unsettling. It's clear that she doesn't have any friends. None of her co-workers. You can tell they don't really like having to interact with her. This guy that has brought her down says something like, yeah, maybe she can help other kids if she's an organ donor.

And Rose is kind of rude to him and says, no, she died of bacterial meningitis. Obviously, she's not going to be able to help other kids. And he's like, oh, okay. I'm sorry. she's not going to be able to help other kids. And he's like, oh, okay. I'm sorry. We see Celia arriving at the hospital, finding out that her daughter has died. She's basically catatonic. She's of course devastated and in shock. And she rushes down to the hospital morgue because she wants to see her daughter because she's already been taken down there. And Rose looks pretty suspicious when Celia says, I need to see her. Rose is shifty and says, oh, she's already been sent to the medical examiner. I can give you their phone number, but they're usually closed on weekends. I can give you their phone number, but they're usually closed on weekends. like a shell of herself, smoking cigarettes, looking, staring unblinkingly into the distance, waiting until she can get to this medical examiner on Monday. She goes there and guess what? They don't have her there. They're kind of panicking. Like, how did this happen? We don't know where your daughter's body is because it's

said that it's been checked out from the hospital, but not checked in at the medical examiner. So Celia's feeling suspicious of Rose again because her vibes are very, very suspicious. And so she goes back to the hospital and sees in the parking lot Rose putting this huge suitcase in her car and rushing to leave before Celia can speak with her. She floors it out of the garage, out of the parking garage, and Celia follows her home and basically shoves past her as they're in the apartment hallway in front of Rose's home. And yeah, Celia just busts past her. She's like, you're being really weird. You've been avoiding me. What's going on? I need to get in here. Rushes into her house, and sure enough, sees Leela in a hospital bed in Rose's living room. There's an alarm going off. Celia's extremely freaked out, starts trying to hit Rose and attack

her, and Rose basically says, if you don't let me examine her, she's going to die. She's alive. She's alive. And this causes Celia to stop and let Rose examine her. We see that she does the blood bag change that's similar to what she was doing with the pig. Leela is on a breathing machine. It looks like she's in a coma, but she is alive. Celia obviously does not understand how this is possible, what happened. Rose tells her that Leela's genetic profile was a match for an experimental treatment that she's been working on. Celia says, for bacterial meningitis? she says no for death and then the pig walks in and she says that's Muriel she died two months ago so we get a little bit of explanation that that she is giving this serum to both Muriel and Leela that is a fetal tissue that triggers cell regenerations. This is a very

new treatment and she doesn't, you know, it's an experiment. We don't know if it's going to work. Celia is very confused and angry, but I think her happiness that her daughter is alive is overruling every other emotion that she has. And so she pretty quickly kind of moves past all these crazy things that are happening and says, you know, I want to stay here. I want to help. Like, what do you need? She can't be alone. Do you have a futon? I'll sleep here. So she has 24-hour supervision. So Celia moves in with Rose. Next day, we see Rose getting an ultrasound. She is 10 weeks pregnant, and she's being very clinical about this. She's not exhibiting the kind of excitement that you would expect someone seeing

their baby for the first time to be showing. She points to something on the ultrasound and says, is that the placenta? She's got this very monotone, emotionless delivery of everything. The nurse is asking her, do you want to print out? And she says, no, it's fine. Are we done? Gets up, walks out, goes home and takes, I think, some sort of abortion pill. And then we see her collecting all the blood and tissue that comes out from her and we're kind of putting a couple pieces together of where she might be getting her fetal DNA from. But Leela is improving. She's now able to breathe on her own so they can take the intubator out of her mouth. Her mom, Celia, says it's a miracle and rose looks very offended by this and corrects her no this is good science and a lot of hard work but through all this these two women are getting closer they're bonding over their shared uh goal of bringing lila back to full health. Rose is softening in her own way at the prospect of Leela being their shared daughter, I guess. Celia sends Rose photos of drawings that Leela did,

and Rose is smiling at work, and one of her co-workers is so thrown off by it and he asks if everything's okay because she's smiling and she says, yeah, everything's fine. But then we see that she is bleeding through her pants, a lot of blood and she collapses. Celia is calling her cell phone. She's obviously late to returning home. We see that Rose is in the hospital. Celia's panicking, doesn't know where she is, is trying to get a hold of her when Leela wakes up, sits up. She looks scary as hell. She's really zombie-like. She's really zombie-like. Definitely not the cute, happy little girl that we saw earlier in the film. But, you know, one step at a time. This is exciting for Celia that Rose is in surgery and a doctor tells her that she had a cervical infection and they had to operate. And because of the operation, it's now she will not be able to conceive children anymore.

She goes home after finding out this news and confirms to Celia that she is indeed the source of the fetal tissue that they've been using to make this serum. So now that she can't get pregnant, she won't be able to make the serum that Leela will need and Leela will die. So they need to find another match. And Celia is not a match. It's not just finding a blood type match. It's a blood type and DNA match. And so it's rare that you find someone that matches. And so they are combing through all hospital records, I'm sure extremely illegally, and find a patient named Emily Parker, who is in her second trimester. That is a very, very close match, not perfect, but close enough. And whatever test she just came in for for her pregnancy, Rose botched the results so that she'll have to come in to get an amnio. Celia is horrified that they are going to put this woman, Emily, through this. She's going to be so stressed that something's wrong with her baby. Rose doesn't share her concerns. She's, again, very clinical and straightforward about it and says the amnio has negligible risk. The baby's results are actually fine, like she'll be fine. And if you

have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. And they, you know, pretty much realize it's their only option. So we see Emily coming into the hospital to have the amnio performed, amnio performed, which I think it is a procedure where you get amniotic fluid from the uterus, which I presume would have fetal tissue, etc. But they have to stick this enormous needle into your stomach and really close to your baby's head. So it would be a very stressful procedure to have done, especially for no reason when everything is in fact fine. So we're getting into some pretty murky waters here. Don't love the lengths that we're going to for this, but you know, a mother's love knows no bounds. So we see Celia has, of course, arranged it so that she is the nurse on this procedure, and she's comforting Emily, telling her it's going to be okay, that she had to do this also, that she also was a geriatric pregnancy. They're both older moms,

and Emily does look very comforted by this, talking to someone who has had a similar experience and had a healthy daughter as a result. So, seems like this is great. We've got our source of fetal tissue. And as we give Lila more of the serum, she's improving steadily. She's starting to vocalize, not speaking, but she's groaning and having almost words, almost words. And she's, again, definitely not her old self, but there are improvements. Rose and Celia are very, very encouraged by this. And then Rose drops the bomb that they'll need Emily to get an amnio every month in order for them to have enough of this supply. Salia's disturbed by this, but again, it's their only option. Rose says, yeah, she'll have to get an amnio every month until birth. And then once we have the placenta, that will last us to the end of the year.

Leela's walking now, taking small steps, continuing to progress. We see the next amnio a month later. Emily is looking really upset that she's having to do this again. Obviously, it would be very terrifying. At the end of the appointment, she reveals to Celia that they have changed where they're going to be delivering the baby. They're going to go to a different hospital because she just feels like something's not right with the amount of amnios she's been getting, and she's got a second opinion somewhere else. So she's decided she's going to transfer to a different hospital. Obviously, Celia is not thrilled about this. We see panic in her eyes. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What are we going to do? We need her to give birth here.

So she tries to convince her, but it doesn't work. And Emily leaves. And meanwhile, we see Leela at home looking pretty scary, and she gets out the stand of a lamp. She bashes the pig's head in and it's very sad. So it's not a great sign. Not a great sign. But Rose hears it happen and comes out and Leela is crying now and she holds Leela and comforts her and gets her back into bed. Also during a lot of this, Leela seems a little bit more comfortable with Rose, which is probably hurtful to Celia. But I think it's a little bit like Leela's not coming back as a warm, I think it's a little bit like Leela's not coming back as a warm, warm, empathetic person. She's coming back more clinical, closer to Rose's vibe. But they're fucked. They don't have any more source of fetal tissue for the serum. And so they tried to do a bone marrow aspiration that isn't ideal, but it will maybe be something. So they, in Rose's apartment, do a bone marrow aspiration, and it looks very painful. But it doesn't really work, and that serum is not working as well, and so Leela dies again. Sally is with her when she dies.

She's crying, devastated at losing her daughter again, but pretty quickly moves her body into the freezer and finds Emily's home address and goes to Emily's house. Emily is surprised that she's there. She tells her, I wanted to bring you your file. I know sometimes when you transfer hospitals, a lot of the paperwork can get lost in the shuffle and it's really annoying. I've had patients complain about that in the past. A good cover story. Emily seems very thankful for this kind woman bringing her these papers. And Celia goes into nurse mode and tells her, you know, sit down, sit down. I'll make you some tea. At this point, Emily is seven months pregnant and she, you know, is talking about how stressful the pregnancy has been. And

you know, is talking about how stressful the pregnancy has been. And she's excited to just give birth and have her baby. And Celia's comforting her and gives her the tea that she has made. And she has put something in that tea that causes Emily to have a seizure and go into labor. The paramedics arrive, load them all into the ambulance, and we realize that the opening scene was actually this scene. And we see her, Emily, looking panicked with the oxygen mask on, asking what's going on, what's happening. We see her go into the operating room, asking what's going on, what's happening. We see her go into the operating room, Celia operating on her with a team of other doctors and nurses and saying, your baby's going to be okay. I promise you, your baby's going to be okay.

And Emily asks, what about me? And Celia looks at her with that sad look. She cannot say that Emily will be okay. And we already know that Emily does, in fact, die. But now we've got that placenta, and that will last us a long time. We see Celia go back to rose's house rose looks not angry she's never really she doesn't have the strongest moral compass in general but i think she would have rather avoided this happening celia explains i didn't mean to kill her i just wanted to induce labor rose says it doesn't matter it's like it's done it already. Let's get to work. So they make that serum, get Leela out of that freezer, put her back in that hospital bed, all hooked up to the serums. Leela's eyes open. We hear her groaning, coming back to life. And we see Celia and Rose leaning over her. And Celia says with a big smile on her face, welcome back, baby. And that's the end of the movie.

Oh, it's good. I loved this movie. Very dark. But I think is very effective. And I really love that ending. Yeah, you know, I just loved it. And I'm excited to see more movies from Laura Moss because this was her, I think, feature length debut. She's directed a bunch of shorts, but hopefully we will see more from her in the future. And now we are going to

talk about some other movies that I have watched in the past couple months. These will all be spoiler free, just my brief thoughts, reactions to each movie, whether or not I recommend it, that sort of stuff. I'm going to talk about some movies like Dream Scenario, Horror Things, Speaking of Frankenstein movies, Saltburn. A lot of people wanted to hear us talk about Saltburn. People requested it as a main episode. It is not a horror movie, but there are some very crazy things in it that I will talk a little bit about. And I'll talk a little bit about The Curse and a bunch of other stuff too. I've watched a lot of movies these past couple months. I'm not gonna talk about all

the movies I've watched, but just the ones I have something to say about. And again, this part of the episode will be available on Patreon at patreon.com slash TSDW podcast. Ooh, baby, it's been a good year for movies, I'd say, which I kind of think it hasn't been a great year for horror movies, which is a bummer. There's been some great horror movies, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's been the best horror year. But I do think it has been one of the best movie in general years. Movie in general years? You know what I mean. So let's get into it. Let's talk about them. To hear the rest of this episode, you are going to want to head to patreon.com slash tsdwpodcast to become a patron. You'll also get access to a bunch of other bonus episodes, weekly video trailer reactions. We also have our patrons vote once a month for a patron

chosen episode. Lots of great stuff over there. But if that's not your thing, no worries. We will be back in the new year with some new episodes for you. And we love you all so much. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a wonderful new year. And we'll see you in 2024. That was a HeadGum Podcast.