The Double Born (2008)
Studio: Celebrity Video Distribution
Release Date: January 26, 2010
Directed By: Tony Randel
Cast: Sammi Davis, Jon Lindstrom, Jenny Dare Paulin, Jake Bern & Alex Weed
Review By: Annie Riordan

I have not read The Dualitists, Or, The Death Doom of the Double Born, the short story by Bram Stoker. It’s available in its entirety for free reading online, but trying to read vast amounts of text on my computer monitor gives me fierce headaches, so I’m not going to attempt it prior to reviewing The Double Born, a low budget effort inspired by Stoker’s “most bizarre and horrifying tale” according to several google’d reviews.

White trash MILF Sophonisba – or Sophie, as she prefers to be called – is the very definition of “damaged.” Knocked halfway into madness by the disappearance of her young son Declan some time earlier, Sophie is a high-strung mess of a woman, alternating between deep depression and drunken rages. She desperately wants another baby, but her new husband Ephraim turns out to be sterile. Devastated by the thought that she’ll never be a mother again, Sophie plunges into a deep despair.

It is at this point that Harry and Tommy enter her life. Hired by Sophie’s sister to clean out and repaint Declan’s room, the two young men are invited to stay for dinner by the lonely Sophie while Ephraim works the overnights shifts. Soon, the deranged Sophie and the disturbed Tommy and Harry form a weird bond, frantically clinging together and forming a sick patchwork family. Sophie persuades both young men to have sex with her in the hopes of conceiving a child. But when a suspicious Ephraim fires the two young men, Sophie goes off the deep end.

Murderous plots and deep, dark secrets are soon erupting all over the place as a newly pregnant Sophie shifts back and forth from madness to reason and drunkenness to sobriety. And neither Tommy nor Harry are going to walk away from their new “family” without a fight.

Well acted and grittier than a kitty litter box that hasn’t been cleaned out for years, The Double Born is a deeply disturbing and harrowing look at the severe and lasting damage that loneliness can inflict upon the human psyche. This is no shallow slasher film about a monster tearing apart friends and family, but rather a psychological horror film about monsters determined to keep a family together, no matter what the cost or how dysfunctional that family may be.

This isn’t a movie that can be “enjoyed” per se, anymore than one enjoys being beaten over the head with a two-by-four whilst trying to recover from a bitch of a hangover. It’s a grim, visceral experience to sit through this film. It’s like watching an insane person’s home movies, or perhaps a road accident: not something you’d choose to inflict upon yourself voluntarily, but hard to look away from once you start. Sammi Davis as Sophie is just flat out amazing. With her tired, expressionless face, stringy hair and vacant eyes, she’s far more terrifying than any undead boogeyman with a hockey mask and a machete. Fluidly shifting from hysterical crying jags to alcohol fueled rages to near comatose depressive states, one shudders to think where she might have found her inspiration. In short, girlfriend has nailed mental illness and fragility to a goddamned T.

No less capable is the supporting cast, but Sammi baby really carries the weight of this film with her unsettlingly intimate performance. Set against a backdrop of rural poverty and despair, The Double Born also manages to capture the nightmarish feel of such films as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original – bitch, please!) and Deliverance.

I’m not going to lie and say this is a fun watch, or an entertaining experience or a movie that you should run right out and buy. It’s not a movie I’d watch again. But one viewing should be sufficient for The Double Born to slither into a nice, dark cranny in your brain and sit there for a while, squirming.

Trailer: