“We pretend the world is safe.”
This film was Interesting but a little too predictable. There were some nice metaphors regarding birth and death that I appreciated, but I don’t know if the teenagers in the back really cared that Director David S. Goyer took the time to make it a psycho-thriller; they wanted more tits and ass and blood-curdling violence, so the subtle nuances were wasted on the target demographic.
The Unborn works around the concept that you believe in a higher power, yes there are titillating moments with flashes of horror that will manage to pull screams out of pre-teens and images that will haunt your mind before you hit your REMs. But, if you don’t believe in the Devil, the plot falters as surreal and pointless and you find yourself rolling your eyes at the predictable end – which is supposed to be an amazing twist.
Still, I was intrigued by the different attempts at telling an interesting story, there were twists and turns as the incredibly beautiful Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) is led down the dark corridor of her mind to discover hidden truths about her family as she faces a metamorphosis of her own. Casey is led to the mirror, the reflection of the other, the portal to the Other Side or even other universes, beyond religion, beyond reason where only evil dwells. She has to make difficult choices as she struggles to understand the changes happening within her own skin, her eyes are beginning to change color and she must discover why her nightmares seem to be surfacing in her waking life. Casey enlists the help of her friend, Romy (Meagan Good) who is a pseudo-spiritualist and a staunch supporter of her friend, regardless of the surrounding perils Casey seems to attract.
I was shocked that Gary Oldman was in this film, and of course he did a good job where it was needed as Rabbi Sendak, but nothing remarkable. The scariest scenes in this film will definitely be talked about well after you see it, and I will guarantee you some new horror image elements (new to me anyway) will be creeping their way into some future B-movies and slasher flicks looking for an edge. The whole neck-twisting thing has been done before, but there is a new angle of attack used by Goyer. I appreciated the novelty and I am sure people will all be googling dybbuk after seeing this film.
There were elements from several horrors and psycho-thrillers in this film, and I am not going to give them away in my review – suffice to say, you will notice them when they occur and they are not too cheesy and pretty well done.
I wasn’t expecting much from this film, so anything I got was a plus. The Unborn is a great high-school or middle school renter. You won’t be disappointed checking it out in theaters, but you would do better to rent it and watch it alone around 1a.m. with the lights out, then it will be better – and you won’t have to listen to incessant noise from the back of the theater and the girly screams you hear will be your own.
