For a some, one of the greatest joys in life can be finally finding the stability to settle down and start a family. In Ross Patridge’s Birthrite, jubilant occasion is inverted to instead become a springboard into a folk horror nightmare.
Maya and Wren seem to have hit a jackpot when an aunt of Wren she didn’t know existed leaves them a house in her will, especially with Wren recently becoming pregnant. Leaving New York City behind, the couple move into seemingly idyllic small town, but it’s not long before things begin to fall apart. Soon the two find themselves enmeshed in a web of dark family secrets and the sinister history of a small town.
The strength in this film is how it uses real world concerns (infertility and the concern for the well-being of a child) as jumping off points into the supernatural. Screenwriters Patch Darragh and Erin Gann take a subtle route to scaring the audience, choosing a slow burn approach over overtly frightening imagery. In their world, the inability to bring a child into the world kicks off an insidious domino effect leading to a demonic pact and an unspeakable event in the town’s history. Likewise, one of the first real examples of something awful happening in the film isn’t supernatural at all at first glance but is just as terrible as if it were supernatural. The film’s leisurely but steady pace only emphasizes the creeping horror of it all.
Alice Kremelberg as the protagonist Wren flawlessly executes a character suddenly faced with the horrific and otherworldly. She transmits the agony of a grieving parent and the frustration of someone seemingly being gaslit by everyone around her. Her disbelief at the revelations of her family in the wake of tragedy is equally genuine, and her restrained descent into someone wracked with horror in the final act is utterly engaging. Juani Feliz as her partner Maya compliments this performance perfectly, injecting not just a sense of concern of her partner’s mental well-being but also a frustration with how things are going for them in this town; it’s important to remember that Maya is not the one who was jazzed on leaving NYC, and that irritation of her partner claiming there is a dark conspiracy against them is somehow extremely relatable despite the extraordinary circumstances of it in the film. Together the two of them forge a complicated but successfully executed emotional core for the film to rest on.
Birthrite is not a ‘boo gotcha’ type horror film. There are no jolting moments of ghastliness, no frightening imagery that will get a quick scare out of you. Instead, it takes It’s time with crafting an atmosphere of unease and dread and creating an overall sense of bleakness that seeks more to unsettle than to shock.
