Welcome to my scattered-brained reactions to The Unborn. Saw this less than two hours ago, and so many questions and complaints bouncing around my melon that I'm sure I'll forget some here. But again, as I've stated in the past: these post-movie write-ups aren't outlined, structured reviews by any means. Rather, they're knee-jerk reactions, free of editing and devoid of extensive proofreading.
Now, on to the show.
Soooo many things wrong with The Unborn. I originally flirted with the idea of simply listing all of the film's faults, but then it struck me how boring that'd be; ranting in typed form endlessly seems so much more liberating.
David S. Goyer, the writer/director, approached this script in reverse, clearly. Sitting around on the set of The Dark Knight (which he co-wrote, but don't let this credit fool you into thinking The Unborn could even apply The Joker's makeup) one day, he must've saw a pitbull strutting down the street and thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if that dog's head was upside down?" And then, hours later, some cockroaches must've scurried on by his toes, and another image hit him: a sea of roaches swimming by atop a wave of putrid yellow mucus-sludge. A few more ghastly visions later, the lightbulb clicked above his head. "I got it....I'll formulate a pussy-willed PG-13 horror film around these images. Story last, specific scenes first."
I'm sure this looked cool in Goyer's thoughts. Too bad using it as a jumpoff point for a script is retarded.
Assuming this is how The Unborn was birthed, take one guess how it all turned out. Give up? A boring, scare-deficient, at-many-times laughable genre misfire that does feature a handful of inspired bits but falters seven times out of ten. From the opening dream sequence onward, the story unfolds in lazily episodic fashion, plodding along random "shock" scene after another, marching to a "twist" ending that Helen Keller would've seen coming about 35 minutes into this 90-minute film that felt way longer.
I really did want to like The Unborn. I was in the minority of those who found promise within its peculiar trailer and its stronger-than-usual-for-horror-flicks cast (Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino). Little did I know, though, that Gugino has a cool two minutes of total screen time, without dialogue, and that Oldman's rabbi character would be an invisible man in terms of fleshing out. Meagan Good, the eye candy extraordinaire that she always is, is stricken with some truly awful "perky, spunky best friend" lines, while this tool named Cam Gigandet brings less to his boyfriend role than required, which was nil to begin with, sadly.
The film rests on the sexy body of newcomer, and lead heroine, Odette Yustman, which would be even more tragic if the film's suckage was really her fault. She's trying her best here, though, and her subpar acting skills would be excusable in a flick packed with stronger writing and pacing. Gorgeous and tons of joy to look at, Yustman is magnetic enough in the physical sense to be a commanding lead, so all Goyer really had to do was surround her with quality scares and holy-shit imagery. Which he attempts, but fails.
I realize that my sometimes-tired "PG-13 horror sucks" complaints aren't particularly valid, since gore and other extremities do not always a scary film make. But in The Unborn's case, the PG-13 rating is the ultimate offender. Every, and I mean every, "terror" setpiece is cut short and/or edited down to show nothing more than scared facial expressions and all-too-quick glimpses of the evil at hand. Take the dream sequence where Yustman circles around her mom, who's seated in an otherwise empty room of the insane asylum she's committed to. Out of nowhere, mommy lifts her head up, only she's not Carla Gugino anymore but some freaky-looking tooth monster, with grimy chompers extended from forehead to lower neck. It's a pretty horrifying special effects creation, but before we can even get a good look at the bastard, the scene ends. Same goes for the film's best moment, where an elderly man spiderwalks after Yustman's grandmother down the halls of a retirement home. As he crab-crawls in rapid speed, his head contorts and twists like a bottle cap, and it's badass. But again, just as the scene is gaining momentum, Goyer chumps out and closes the curtain with a fucking lame jump-scare.
I was honestly ready stand up and cheer for this crazy old dude's money scene. Way to fuck it up, Sir Goyer.
You know what else Goyer and company fucked up? This little guy right here:
That's "Jumby," or whatever the fuck his name is, doing his best impression of "Matt Barone watching The Unborn." Spot on, Jumby. Spot on.
Speaking of which...what the fuck is a Jumby, anyway? Yustman's character's father explains to her that when her mother was preggers, they'd nicknamed the soon-to-be twin boy "Jumby," which leads the ghost to continually proclaim "Jumby is ready to be born now." Which is apparently a chilling sentence in Goyer's mind; in mine, its asinine, comical, and meaningless. How the hell does a parent nickname their unborn seed "Jumby"? ***Crickets. Tumbleweeds blow by.***
What's The Unborn about, though?, one might ask at this point. Try this on for size: Yustman begins suffering from "creepy" hallucinations full of ghostly kids and evil bathroom mirrors. Turns out, a demon spirit---hatched from the tortured soul of a little twin boy trapped in Auschwitz during the Holocaust (I'm dead ass)---had once tried to enter the world through Yustman's twin brother, but her sib died in utero. So now, said rugrat-poltergeist is pissed, and wants to kill all those around Yustman so he can have her body all to himself. Can't blame him for that much....she's one fine piece of ace.
That "Holocaust" plot point seems a bit much? The entire theater audience I saw this one with agrees. At one point, Yustman declares, "I have to finish what was started at Auschwitz," to which every one in attendance burst out in uncontrollable laughter, not to mention several sighs of disbelief and contempt.
But again, I'd be willing to look past such a problem if the movie had went balls-to-the-wall with some real horror tension. Not the case, at all. This is the most dreadfully dull horror film I've seen in many a moon, even tougher to sit through than Alex Aja's disgraceful Mirrors. Shit was so painful, I found myself growing tired of ogling over Ms. Odette Yustman, and that's a fucking blasphemic feeling.
See what I mean? How could any many heterosexual man deny their eyes of this?
And don't even get me started on one especially heinous moment of monumentally-poor "suspension of basic time principles" stupidity. Okay, I can't resist. [SPOILER ALERT] So Yustman and Meagan Good are chatting via Instant Messenger webcam, right. And Yustman warns Good that Jumby is going to kill her loved ones to get to her, including Ms. Good, but Good is a bimbo and ignores this warning. Instead, she goes downstairs to answer the doorbell, which happens to have been rung by Jumby-occupying-the-body-of-a-butt-ugly-kid who proceeds to stalk and stab Good all the back upstairs. Realizing that murder is afoot at Good's house, Yustman calls her tool of a boyfriend and orders him to meet her at Good's house immediately in hopes of saving Good. Now, mind you, three seconds after Good answers the door, which is seven seconds after pausing her webcam chat with Yustman (who is back at her own house, which isn't next door to Good's), Yustman and her boy-toy are already at Good's house to the rescue. Any attempt at comprehending or logically explaining this lapse of time-travel has made me want to slam my cranium into the nearest wall, so I've decided to just give up and hate this movie even more.
The Unborn sucks. Odette Yustman is likeable and beautiful, but that's not enough.
The Unborn? More like Still Born. Get it? How about, The Abortion? **Slapping my knee** I guarantee you that at least five film critics will use that joke in their own reviews. Check Rotten Tomatoes in a week to see for yourself.
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