The Unborn Potential

Though this wasn't a very noteworthy movie, it was enjoyable. And heck, there are much worse out there.

I was really excited about seeing this one. The trailer (Youtube, Apple) gave me high hopes. But, sadly, this was just another movie that fell short. It had its moments, and they were good ones, but it had just as many flaws. Those flaws brought it down.

Just to be prepared, I had a nice corny title in mind for this post in case it ended up really sucking: "The Unborn should have stayed that way". I'm glad I didn't have to use it.


Now, let's start with the good.

The acting was solid. Something we don't get in all our horror movies these days. Gary Oldman gave us a decent performance as the Rabbi. Some even say he stole the set when he was on scene, but I don't think so. The rest were nothing special, but nobody was "bad". Though I was surprised to see Carla Gugino and James Remar playing nothing-roles as Casey's parents.

Pretty much every other aspect of the movie, however, was "here and there". Like the special effects. They looked great when they were used to tweak the way possessed people looked, and when they created all that trouble in the public restroom. But at times they became obviously fake, taking me right out of the movie. Such as whenever the little creepy kid did his scream thing. It looked fake, it felt fake. The same goes for a portion of the scary-old-man scene. I think they should have moderated their CGI use, or at least make the less impressive bits harder to see with lighting or camera motion.

(She's scared, you see.)

"Its a horror movie, how about you get to the part about the scares!" Hey, I'm getting there! If I'm counting correctly, they had two "good" scares, three "properly" creepy scenes, and a bunch of "BOO!" scares. Yes, things-jumping-out-at-you is the main scare cause of most horror movies, but I don't count them as "good". They're alright. Good scares build up the atmosphere and stick with you. One in this movie really set you up for a scare, denied it, THEN got you. Disarming! Creepiness is its own category, and boy they had a few good ones. I mean, did you see the old man in the trailer? Unfortunately, the few noteworthy bits didn't leave a lasting impression (i.e. they didn't trouble my sleep at all). In fact, the movie's big climax wasn't even scary. It was like it turned into an action movie out of nowhere: I was excited rather than frightened. Really cool, but not horror.

Sadly, I did agree with some of what the critics said about the lack of overall scariness and quality in some areas (although they pushed those opinions further than I think was called for). But one thing many of them said bothered me: the movie was laughable? Lets look at Mr. Ratliff's comment on Rotten Tomatoes.

"The Unborn is so lame that even a scene where Nazi 'doctors' experiment on twin children by poking a needle in their eyeballs is more laughable than horrendous."

I... can't really see that being laughable in any context. I actually heard a guy laughing in the theater after every "scary" scene, but his laughs were delayed and sounded uncertain. Probably just another person trying to prove to nobody in particular that "I don't get scared of movies, no sir, not me!" I'll admit aspects of the movie may not have been top notch, but they were far from laughable.

The plot, while interesting, had some holes. For example, the spirit possesses people left and right, and yet "Jumby wants to be born now." Why go through all that trouble when you can take anyone anytime? Beats me. And maybe I missed something, but what were those bugs about? I couldn't see any reason for focusing on just the one type. If somebody gets stabbed, aren't police usually a little suspicious of anyone present at the time? And the survival of certain people is unclear at the end, which was tiny bit frustrating. But I do have to give them this: the girl knew to turn the dang light on when something scary was happening. Also, characters were willing to believe that crazy stuff was going on. Refreshing. If she told me all those insane things, I'd be inclined to believe in supernatural causes too.

Overall: if you like horror movies in general, you should be happy with this one. Chances are you've enjoyed ones that are much worse (I know I have).

The first and third pictures come from Rotten Tomatoes.