Movie Reviews: THE UNBORN

Saturday, September 12, 2009
Movie Reviews: THE UNBORN
ON DVD



THE UNBORN




Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) hated her mother for leaving her as a child. But when inexplicable things start to happen, Casey begins to understand why she left. Plagued by merciless dreams and a tortured ghost that haunts her waking hours, she must turn to the only spiritual advisor, Sendak (Gary Oldman), who can make it stop. With Sendak’s help, Casey uncovers the source of a family curse dating back to Nazi Germany—a creature with the ability to inhabit anyone or anything that is getting stronger with each possession. With the curse unleashed, her only chance at survival is to shut a doorway from beyond our world that has been pried open by someone who was never born.

Cast: Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, Cam Gigandet, Meagan Good, James Remar

Director: David S. Goyer

Opened January 9, 2009

Runtime: 1 hr. 28 min

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, disturbing images, thematic material and language including some sexual references

Genres: Thriller, Supernatural Thriller



Review:




The Unborn is a hodgepodge of a horror film. Writer Director David Goyer seemed to be trying desperately to create something wildly original but instead just gave us a blended version of any recent Japanese horror remake, The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, The Thing and just for the hell of it Denzel Washington’s The Fallen. Sprinkle liberally with a Kubrick like oddities ala The Shining with a dash of underwear exploration and you have The Unborn. It’s surprising that Goyer’s script is so terribly unfocused yet over done at the same time. Certain aspects of the story are over explained but others seem to just appear and disappear without notice. As a horror movie it strives for something different or disturbing but always ends up relying on the classic fright moments to get a cheap scare. As shown in Blade Trinity, Goyer as a director doesn’t have much of a talent for bring out anything discernible from his cast, the same is true here. Odettee Yustman headlines and spends the first 3rd of the movie walking slowly through darken hallways and bathrooms in some incredibly tight underwear. Once that passes she’s require to act and then things get a bit more dicey. Yustman delivers lines with all the conviction of a first year drama student and it doesn’t help that her character makes massive logical leaps for no apparent reason. It might help Yustman if the script had built more 3 dimensional characters to surround her with but she doesn’t and we are given two flimsy stock characters that are dispatched with zero impact. The smaller supporting roles are surprisingly well cast but terribly underused and underwritten. Gary Oldman and Idris Elba both have small roles and walk in and out of the film as if they were passing by to pay a ticket. Once Oldman leaves the film rushes to a swift conclusion with a twist that supposed to comes out of leftfield but was terribly obvious.




D+