Reborn movie review: Eddie Cheung, Venus Wong in dull Hong Kong doll ‘horror'
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 lack of violence and frights in this skewed vision of the grieving process may seem like an outlier in the oeuvre of its writer-director. Pang is best known for co-directing the local horror gem
The Eye (2002) but has recently delivered one disappointment after another, including 2023's
Death Stranding and 2024's
Haunting Call
Play
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.
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