The Unborn
The Unborn takes a twist with the exorcism and haunting using a Jewish background for the tale of a girl haunted by a spirit that needs to be dealt with.
Film making 5/25
Cinematography 18/25
Audio 18/25
Bonus Features 2/25
Total 43/100
You know a movie is going to be bad when a woman out for a jog stops and sees a child who has lost a glove turn into a dog and she follows it into the woods. It may have been a dream but horror movies do not always need to have characters that do the stupid things in order to make it easier for the bad stuff to happen.
Casey Beldon, played by Odette Yustman, is being haunted by her twin brother who died in her mother’s womb but not the way you would think. The dybbuk in The Unborn is a spirit that is trying to use twins to enter the world of the living and an unborn twin is one of the best ways to do this.
After several events with animals that can turn their heads upside down and a small boy that is her unborn twin she finds her grandmother who explains to her about her past. Her grandmother and twin brother was experimented on by Joseph Mengele during World War II and when a dybbuk tried to enter our world through her dead twin she killed it again.
It has been trying to enter our world through Casey now and she must perform an exorcism to send the spirit back to where it belongs. With the help of two priests and several others they perform a Jewish exorcism on her and send the spirit back but her friends end up dying in the process.
The Unborn is not a great film and it would seem that I agree strongly with critics, the film rated 12% on the tomatometer at Rottentomatoes. There is a very scattered story and it is not all that hard to follow the main idea but they throw things in so haphazardly that it makes little sense.
You have to get a full explanation from the grandmother about why the spirit is trying to come to our world and using her when you really do not need an explanation for a haunting. Really good horror movies do not have to explain why things are happening but just show you it and let your imagination run wild.
The film has those jump in your seat moments like all good horror films do but not from things that may happen to you or things you can see coming but just jump in front of the screen scary. Technically the film did well with the special effects but they did put it together well enough to make a film that just does not work as a horror flick.
Technically the Blu-ray release is great with well subdued and wintery colors and scenery from the start just like the overhead shot down a snowy river near Chicago. The film continues with good color for a horror film with plenty of darker and subdued tones and no problems with video.
Transfer was great for the video and audio is also good but when you have a flat film nothing can be more irritating than a great presentation and sound package for a flop of a movie. Yes, you do get a seemingly correct fill of extras to go along with a bad film with only deleted scenes so it would seem that they didn’t bother with any extra work to go along with the Blu-ray edition.
The Blu-ray edition does contain both the unrated version and the theatrical release of the film if your interested but I really do not see much use of getting this anyway. The story is okay and could have been good but the film just did not have the direction to get it right in the first place.
The Unborn is just another current horror flick that has fallen by the wayside as most, if not 99% of the current genre has. You will not be missing anything if you even pass up The Unborn as a rental so don’t even bother with this one.