Unborn

Having seen the trailers for 'Unborn' and admiring David S. Goyer's writing talents on films such as 'The Dark Knight' I was kind of looking forward to it. I knew it wouldn't be much more than a typical Hollywood attempt at horror but I thought I'd get at least 90 minutes of entertainment out of it. I was wrong.

The story is terribly contrived and goes through the typical horror story motions from start to finish: childhood trauma - check! Nightmares - check! It also takes so much content from other films its unbelievable. More unbelievable is the fact that it botches these 'homages' every time. The film plods on and on attempting to at least get a jump out of you (which it fails at) until finally you get to the finale. Needless to say, the finale is also terrible. More so because at least the one thing the film does manage to do is contain the odd decent special effect. However, the finale for some reason doesn't contain any of these effects and resorts to actors merely wearing contact lenses.

I'm perhaps being a bit harsh giving the film a 3/10 but given the actors involved and David S. Goyer's obvious writing talent, this film really should have delivered far more.

OK, let me get this out in the open immediately: this movie is pretty predictable if you have been watching any 'new' American Horror flick within the past five years, complete with gratuitous shots of Fox's, excuse me, Yutsman's backside. To its credit, the movie does have a great amount of potential from the source material, but fails to give birth to it. The effects are well done, the acting is decent (for the genre at least), and I left the movie feeling that I was at least entertained for the last 87 min (although I did wish that they would have cut out 10min. or so in the middle and made the final confrontation longer and better).

If you already like watching these kinds of movies, the Unborn certainly doesn't try to do anything different then what has already been done, and is worth watching; But you are expecting a radical departure from the typical Horror flick, this ain't it.

This is a movie that really picks up in the second act. The first half relies a little too heavily on predictable spooks that don't make a lot of sense, and flaunting the main actress about in revealing clothing. However after a certain point you can notice the film starting to focus and becoming more creative and daring.

I'm only familiar with the Unrated DVD version, but given the choice it's often the most complete version anyhow.

In music and sound effects, you'll notice obvious influences from The Grudge, but nothing that is a plain ripoff. Fans of Silent Hill will see some influence as well which spices up the second half quite a bit. You need to stick with it, and get past the uninspired, cookie-cutter horror bits in order to see what is really being offered from this film.

Funny thing. Just before this weekend I was thinking to myself, 'Where the hell are all the bad movies? About time you searched one out, lad.' Phew! In the nick of time "The Unborn" turned up.

Make no mistake, "The Unborn" was a real stinker. A horror in the worst sense of the word. I cannot imagine the wager that fine actors like Gary Oldman and Carla Gugino must have lost to get them to appear in this poo, but it must have been a big one.

Hurrah! There were some good things.

Some of the twisted body imagery was quite effective. (It was effective when it first appeared in "The Exorcist", twenty six years ago.) Also, Megan Fox lookalike Odette Yustman looked quite nice in her underwear.

Boo! There were many more bad things.

A predictable plot, cobbled together from a million other direct-to-video movies. No tension or scares whatsoever, with every story twist sign posted miles ahead. Awful acting, of course, with 'best friend' Meagan Good being top of the list of shame. Slow, boring, terrible.

I thought that "The Unborn" was absolutely dreadful. A rotten film.

Avoid.

Just saw The Unborn, when I saw the trailer I thought well this might actually be a good little horror flick. While I would not say this was a terrible movie, it unfortunately did have some mistakes.

This entire film is basically a marathon of shocks, crazy situations and (some) pretty creepy ghosts/demons, so I guess, being a horror fan, thats a good thing, right? well, in this case, its not. The Unborn certainly does not lack in the horror department, showcasing some rather creepy moments, but unfortunately the movie lacks of any suspense, buildup, character development, nor does it have a good script.

Odette Yustman does pretty good, but it's not her fault her performance comes through less, its the script. The movie, from the exact second it begins, delivers 'scare' after scare after scare, but the sad thing is, its not that scary because you don't care about the characters or the story, and there's no buildup whatsoever to speak of.

Its actually a terrible waste, because this movie could have been a solid genre effort, too bad the director/ writer chose the easy way out, and delivered what is one the laziest, been-there-done-that productions of the year.

Entertaining it is to some degree, but its not a full recommendation