The Unborn (2009) Review

Written by: yourmotheratemydog715   

It seems to be a good rule of thumb anymore that if a film’s advertising technique is to just show off how hot the main star is and show nothing else about the film, the movie’s not gonna be very good at all. So, when the “Unborn” posters showed up and were nothing more than giant Photoshopped ass shots, I was naturally skeptic about the film.

And, even though all the people on the IMDb board saying “OMG I saw teh traillerr 4 unborrn b4 twilght adn omg it was sooooo scary I crieeed!!!!!!!” seemed to think the trailer looked scary, I thought it looked like another stupid PG-13 piece of crap.

Well, I saw The Unborn last night, and let me tell you, “stupid PG-13 piece of crap” is an understatement. The filmmakers got even the easiest things to do right in a horror movie wrong and the movie was stupid, ineffective, nonsensical and a failure in every way possible.

So, what’s the plot, you ask? Well, a character we learn next to nothing about is haunted by her unborn brother who may or may not have something to do with the Holocaust or something like that. Some people die, some things get their head spun around and then there’s the worst exorcism scene since One Missed Call’s cell phone exorcism. That’s about all there is to it.

The first problem I noticed immediately is that it seems like the whole first twenty minutes of the freaking film is missing. The film starts out with some stupid dream sequence (one of many, more on that later) but then Odette Yustman wakes up. She immediately starts being haunted at the beginning of the film and tries to figure out what’s going on the entire film. Not once are the characters fleshed out, and the filmmakers were too busy trying to fill the film with as many shitty jump scares as possible that they forgot to actually introduce what the hell was happening in the film. I don’t really know how to explain this complaint about the film, but it was almost as if the film was originally like 2 hours long, but the filmmakers decided that was too long for the ADD-riddled teen audience, so they just dropped the entire first reel of the film without taking into consideration that every film needs a beginning. It felt like it just skipped right to the middle.

I said in the last paragraph that they tried to shove in every possible jump scare you could think of. Well, not only are there too many jump scares, these are executed ridiculously badly and many are among the worst jump scares in history. Most of the scares come from Yustman’s unborn brother, who is haunting her, I think. It seems like there’s a reason all those Asian movies decided to use little girls with long black hair as their ghost. This ghost looks less like a ghost than an emo shopping at Hot Topic with pale skin and too much eyeliner. The ghost is just about as unimposing as one of those emos as well.

But wait. It gets better. Soon enough, we learn the ghost ‘s name… Jumby. Yes, Jumby. And Jumby wants to be born now, whatever the fuck that means. I mean, seriously, could the filmmakers not think of anything better than Jumby? That’s about as imposing as freaking Gumby. Or Gumbo.

You may have seen the trailer for the movie where an old man’s head turns all the way around. Well, if you thought that looked stupid in the trailer, don’t worry, it looks even stupider here. Unfortunately, the filmmakers apparently thought it looked terrifying, and decided to use the obviously fake CGI effect multiple times throughout the movie. Not once is it not ridiculously stupid.

So far, all the jump scares I’ve explained have been of the Gumbo variety or things with their head turning around. Well, every other jump scare in the movie is in the form of a dream sequence. Yes, there are so many fucking dream sequences in the movie that it seems like more of the movie is made up of dream scenes than actual reality scenes. And unlike the dream sequences in say “Nightmare on Elm Street” or even the opening scene in “Orphan”, these are just as ridiculously unscary as that Gumby character.

This is kind of off-topic, but I think I’ve lost count of how many times these two lines have been spoken in horror movies:

“I’ve been seeing things.”

“What kinds of things?”

Those two lines are about as cliché as the aforementioned Asian ghost girls with long black hair.

But, contrary to what the posters would have you believe, there are actually other characters in the movie that aren’t Odette Yustman’s ass. Unfortunately, these other characters are so clichéd and stupid that you actually want them to die so they’ll just shut the fuck up and the movie will just end.

But, unlike slashers where you get annoying characters’ demises in gory and original ways, “The Unborn” is PG-13, so it’s guaranteed you won’t get any gore to make the death scenes even somewhat memorable. Oh, and that “Unrated Edition” B.S? Just forget that, the “Unrated Edition” is probably exactly the same as the Theatrical Edition. But the film is such a P.O.S. that I’m not watching it twice to figure out.

Well, the review for this is quickly reaching two pages long on Microsoft Word, so I guess that’s a sign that maybe I should just shut up and wrap this overlong review up. Well, here’s my final thoughts. There’s some drummers in the background about fifteen minutes into the film doing this cool thing where they spin their drumsticks around and hit buckets. And, after watching the entire film, I’ve decided that 5-second passing sequence was better and much more entertaining than any point in the rest of the fucking movie. David S. Goyer, what were you thinking? Stick with Batman and leave horror alone. It’s not your forte.

1 out of 10.

P.S., Gary Oldman, did you lose a bet or something? Stop wasting your time with this crap.