The Unborn
Review by Matthew Rodgers
The trickiest of genres very rarely serves up an original treat. Remakes and re-imaginings – the recent, lumbering Friday the 13th – or [lost in] translations – The Grudge and Dark Water to name two – they have all failed by being uninspired and fundamentally not scary. The Dark Knight scribbler David Goyer must therefore be saved from a chainsaw massacre or camping trip for one to those Blair Witch woods, because he has at least attempted to write and direct an original horror from his own twisted brainbox.
Odette Yustman (Cloverfield) is Casey, a straight laced girl with model looks (notice how the poster campaign has focused directly on her derriere? Surely the sign of a classic horror?), square jawed boyfriend, and all of the mod-cons a foxy young movie protagonist unrealistically possesses. Things take a turn of the spooky nature when she begins to suffer from disturbing dreams that prominently feature a young boy with piercing blue eyes. Believing she is being haunted by the spectre of her dead unborn twin manifesting itself in the form of a fancy pants demon, Odette employs the help of Rabbi Sendak (Gary Oldman) in attempt to exorcise the evil from her life before it consumes her.
Ridiculous as that sounds, The Unborn isn’t cinematic afterbirth (apologies), although despite the original script Goyer does struggle within the constraints of the genres clichés. The over-reliance on the old “mirror in the bathroom” scare tactic is amateur at best, as is the now familiar J-Horror jerky headed ghost that makes an appearance on the asylum staircase. It’s all the more frustrating that the movie gets a lot of the other scares right, and not simply the “cat in the cupboard” variety, the only problem then being the shock-around-the corner score that lets you know that a jumps coming.
The films main strength is in creating a warped and unnerving vision of horror. The excellent demon dogs are freakishly Faustian and the general set-design really emphasises the creep factor to successful effect. There are notable comparisons with Christophe Gans Silent Hill adaptation, with the striking visuals but unfortunately also with the haphazard story.
Performances are uniformly perfunctory; Oldman must have a new annex to build on his house or his Harry Potter money has dried up because he phones this one in. The only other member of the cast with any narrative prominence is Yustman, and it’s hard to really criticise her because she does what is asked of her, and that’s to simply look good and scream, hardly a stretch.
The Unborn is B-movie fodder with pretensions to be something greater. Having an Auschwitz subplot doesn’t elevate it to intellectual horror though, maybe just slightly offensive silliness. It’s a mish-mash of uneven ideas and poorly paced scares that frustrates because every so often it does work – a tricycle on car collision will have you squealing – only to descend into ridiculous generic possession horror.
