The Unborn Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 01.12.2009

Jumby wants to be born now. If it means I didn't have to see this movie, then for God's sake, please let him be.

Directed by: David Goyer
Written by: David Goyer

Starring:
Odette Yustman - Casey Beldon
Gary Oldman - Sendak
Ethan Cutkosky - Barto
Cam Gigandet - Mark
Meagan Good - Romy
Jane Alexander - Sofi Kozma
James Remar - Gordon Belman
Idris Elba - Arthur Wyndham
C.S. Lee - Dr. Lester Caldwell
Rhys Coiro - Mr. Shields
Carla Gugino - Janet Beldon



Running Time: 87 minutes
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, disturbing images, thematic material and language including some sexual references

David Goyer is a mind-boggling filmmaker at times in terms of the wide spectrum of his films; not in style, but in quality. The man behind the stories of such well-received films as Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Dark City is also responsible for serious critical and commercial flops, such as Blade Trinity, The Crow: City of Angels and the made-for-TV movie Nick Fury: Agent of Shield starring none other than David Hasselhoff. It often seems as if Goyer has one good movie in him for every four or five bad ones, or perhaps that every time he puts together the story for a great one he must then, by some karmic decree, balance it out by just as much on the other side of the spectrum. With the 2008 Batman sequel pulling in accolade after accolade, including a Writer’s Guild of America nomination for Goyer and his co-writers, one wondered what his next project would be. The answer is The Unborn, a PG-13 horror film starring Odette Yustman and Gary Oldman that he both wrote and got behind the lens to direct, something he hasn’t done since Blade Trinity.

The film stars Yustman as Casey Beldon, a college girl living with her father (Remar). Casey’s mother was institutionalized when she was young and ended up committing suicide by hanging herself, something that Casey is still dealing with. Casey finds herself, while baby-sitting one night, plagued with a strange dream of a young, disturbing boy (Cutkosky). When a creepy event with the children leaves Casey hit in the face with a mirror, she starts to develop a discoloration in her cornea. As the strange dreams continue, other things start to happen; she starts seeing the weird boy all over the place in ominous ways and mirrors start to act up. She eventually comes upon a secret from her father; she was a twin, and her brother died in the womb. Casey becomes convinced that she is being haunted by the ghost of her unborn brother, and that it was what caused her mother to commit suicide. As she investigates further, dark secrets emerge and she turns to the skeptical Rabbi Sendak (Oldman) for help. But can Sendak, Casey and her boyfriend Mark (Gigandet) stop this all before it is too late?

David Goyer is a talented writer; that much cannot be denied. Even some of his worst films, such as The Crow: City of Angels have come from interesting ideas that were poorly executed. The Unborn is the culmination of that flaw in Goyer’s work. While the writer/director has some very interesting ideas, they are executed on film and in the script in such an inept, painfully bad way that it completely misses the mark. Goyer has drawn heavily from Jewish mysticism, an untapped reservoir of supernatural stories and myth, to create the script, but in attempting to make such an esoteric subject accessible to a PG-13 audience he dumbs it down to the lowest common denominator of bizarre-looking contortions of life and jump scares. One of the reasons The Exorcist worked so well as a horror film is that it took the Judeo-Christian ideal of demons and stayed as faithful as possible to the old tales and the history of exorcisms in Catholicism without trying to turn it into a shallow jump-scare laden film. In Goyer’s film the images are bizarre, but with the exception of a legitimately creepy human contortion that has been already been plastered over posters and trailers, it’s so off-key as to be laughable—which, indeed, the audience in the theater does do. In the meantime, Goyer is largely incompetent as a director here. From the opening moments where a dream sequence does little to frighten, through the early part of the film where he seems more interested in showing Yustman in a skimpy top and panties, Goyer seems to be more than willing to pander to a crowd wanting nothing more than quick “boo!” moments and flashes of skin. It’s a complete disservice to a fascinating concept of the ghost as a Jewish demon, known as a dybbuk, that seeks re-entry into this world.

Along the way, he creates cardboard characterizations for everyone but a few key characters such as Casey, Sendak and Sofi Kozma (Alexander), a Holocaust survivor that factors into the back story. Yes, that’s correct; besides the ghost, the Fuhrer’s folk turn up. When Nazis show up in horror, as previously seen in Exorcist: The Beginning or 1983’s The Keep, you know to be worried, because they're usually there just to give the filmmaker justification for saying "very very bad things happened, and that's why everything's scary now!" Unfortunately here, by the time they show up, you’re already well past the point of worrying and are either laughing or checking your watch to see how long it is until the movie is over. Goyer should be given some credit for trying to hold some reasonable elements of authenticity of exorcisms, but even that is bowled over by being far too short of a segment before we get into an action-filled yet boring climax. One thing that he absolutely must be given credit for, and I say this one without any caveats involved, is that despite the PG-13 rating it never feels sanitized for our protection. He manages to create a film that feels it earns its horror status without tossing in the liberal amounts of gore, blood and sex. Goyer certainly deserves some level of praise for that, and I’ll gladly give it to him…even if that’s about the only praise he’ll earn here.

The shallow characters aren’t given much of a lift by the acting either, as Yustman spends most of the early parts of the film in her underwear with a vacant expression and the rest of it screaming and Meagan Good doing the snotty-yet-superstitious best friend role absolutely no favors. Gary Oldman is good enough, but he’s still sleepwalking his way through this performance compared to his excellent work in scores of other movies. Poor Jane Alexander is given the extremely unenviable task of delivering the cringingly bad (and in poor taste, I might add) line of “You must finish what was started in Auschwitz” with some sort of emotional depth, and at least she somewhat succeeds. Goyer absolutely wastes two very talented actors in James Remar and Carla Gugino, whose appearances collectively make about ten minutes worth of the movie. Meanwhile, Cam Gigandet, recently seen as the villainous James in Twilight, manages to hold down the role of boyfriend Mark with at least some level of engagement and charm, making his performance, while hardly great, one of the better ones in the film.

Goyer unfortunately doesn’t seem to understand what makes a great horror film. He knows what sells trailers, certainly, as there are more than enough creepy moments, jump-scares, and hot young adults to put together a worthwhile two and a half minute advertisement. Unfortunately, the remaining eighty-four and a half minutes are full of some of the greatest horror clichés and predictable moments known to cinema and poor attention to detail. When Casey is jogging along in the morning to open the film, you almost immediately know that she’s in a dream sequence. He rams all of the elements that have stunk up horror for the years into one; the Americanized version of J-Horror creepy kid (but it’s a boy this time, so it's original, see?), the stupid decisions made by the characters—I swear I’ve never seen so many people react to lights going out by venturing into the darkest corners before—the aforementioned Nazi element, the countless gaps in logic, the need to explain everything, the terrible twist at the end. At the end, the audience walks away feeling like they’ve seen several of the worst horror movies of the year all crammed into one. One hopes that Goyer has found a story editor on his next script—which, by the way, is X-Men Origins: Magneto—who can take his interesting ideas and make something great out of them. Otherwise, X-Man fans should be far more scared then anyone walking out of this movie where I attended it ended up being.

The 411: Every January, there is an automatic early contender for the worst film of the year. In 2008, it was Meet the Spartans; in 2009, it is The Unborn. While not nearly as bad as Spartans, David Goyer's film is a very interesting idea that gets hamstringed by terrible plot twists, horrible dialogue, and shallow exploration of the concept. The performances, with the possible exception of Cam Gigandet and Gary Oldman, match the script and help to deliver a horror film that somehow manages to match last year's worst scare filck, Prom Night.

Final Score:  2.0   [ Very Bad ]