Tuesday 2 February 2010

Review: The Unborn

imagesunborn When I sat my family down to watch this movie it was under a hail of protest - I was the only one who really wanted to watch it - and when The Unborn started I felt a familiar sinking feeling that I had seen this all before.

The Unborn starts off as a typical teenage horror movie - young attractive girl is babysitting and discussing her recent 'bad dream' with her equally attractive, valley-girl-type friend on the phone when she hears voices coming from the baby monitor.

The main character Casey is being haunted by a freaky-looking little boy and one of her eyes starts turning blue. She goes to a doctor who tells her that this has something to do with her being a twin in the womb, and so naturally she suspects the little boy haunting her is her unborn brother...

Except it isn't.

It is actually a Dibbok, an evil demon that has been hanging around her family for the last few generations, starting with her grandmother in the Holocaust. There is an interesting link back to Auschwitz and the doctor who did tests on twins (a real occurrence, and for anyone who is interested there is an amazing novel written by Lynda La Plant about twins separated during these tests), but this is just skipped over, which was disappointing as it would have actually made for an original storyline! As it was the movie basically just went back to the demon trying to kill everyone around Casey.

I would have really liked it if this movie had gone down either the 'twin wanting to be reborn' route, or the 'Auschwitz' route, but as it was The Unborn was basically just another movie about a random demon wanting to kill everyone. It is a shame because there were some really creepy moments, such as when Casey wakes up to find herself suspended on the ceiling, facedown, and see's herself still lying in bed only for the bedcovers to be pulled down to reveal the freaky little boy curled up beside her. There are also some moments that reminded me of The Exorcist, with people being wrenched so their bodies are on backwards and doing a weird spider-walk while chasing people.

This definitely isn't a must see movie, but it did fill in a few hours on an otherwise dull night, and all of my family were still talking to me by the time it finished, so I guess it couldn't have been that bad!

Mx

4 comments:

  1. Is John Hurt in this one? Or Gary Oldman? I seem to remember that it had a fairly famous co-star.

    That is a bit of a downer, the Unborn not being a twin or anything. In my research for Release, I did read about the horrible experiments done on twins; in some cases, the doctor tried to sew them together again to see how they would function. Horrible!

    Have you seen the movie with Ray Stevenson about zombies who haunt a WWII outpost? It's called Outpost -- pretty scary, and good too.

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  2. This is in my ever growing pile of dvds to watch. Great write up!

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  3. Thanks guys! Yeah, Gary Oldman is in this movie, but he plays a Jewish priest (sorry if there is a specific name for Jewish Priest) and he certainly isn't a main or original character. The fact I completely forgot to mention it says enough!
    Nicole - you really should read the novel I mentioned (it's called Entwined). It is just amazing and I cried through most of it. A must read, especially with your interested in the topic.

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  4. This is not one I've seen, but want to. Great review and the thumbnail picture has been creeping me out all week.

    If I haven't said it, congrats on your book. I'm in the process of querying mine now-so daunting!

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