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Casey's twin
brother died in her mothers womb. A few
years later Casey's mother committed suicide due
to depression. Now, Casey is all grown up and has the
life of an ordinary popular teen with hot friends and
a hot boyfriend. However, her dead twin brother has
no intentions of staying dead and before long Casey
starts having ghostly visions and strange things are
happening around her.
Asylums, exorcisms, demons, hauntings, ghosts, evil
animals, Nazi experiments, creepy mirrors - what
didn't this movie have? Oh yes, originality. Seriously,
just because you cram a horror flick full with
various terrifying entities doesn't mean that you
have a terrifying movie on your hands. The Unborn
is another clichéd and uninspired teen horror flick
in the vein of The Boogeyman, When A Stranger Calls
and The Messengers. Shockingly enough, it is not a
remake. Just like with The Messengers, one would
automatically assume that it's a remake due to its
Asian-inspired story and style but this one is
actually an original - and right there it earned
one point from me. Seriously, these days I'm happy
as long as I don't have to sit in a cinema and watch
my favourite horror movies get torn to pieces (even
though this is suspiciously similar to last years
Bollywood horror flick called "Gauri: The Unborn").
Heading into The Unborn I had low expectations.
Really low expectations. It's a movie about a teenage
girl who's possessed by her dead twin brothers
spirit and on top of that it stars Meagan Good
(who isn't getting a very good track record when
it comes to horror flicks with movies like Saw 5,
One Missed Call and Venom in her resume) - I mean,
how good could it possibly be? Well, surprisingly
enough it's not that bad. I mean, it's bad but it's
not I-want-to-rip-my-arm-off-just-to-have-something-
to-throw-at-the-screen bad. The movie markets itself
as "from the writer of The Dark Knight". I wonder
why they didn't write "from the writer of Demonic
Toys". You know, I don't think that David S. Goyer
has that much talent. I think that he's extremely
overrated. Sure, he wrote the story for The Dark
Knight but he had nothing to do with the screenplay.
However, I do think that David deserves more credit
as a director because the pitfall of The Unborn isn't
the directing. In fact, the movie looks spectacular
with many interesting angles and beautiful cinematography
(even if some scenes felt more suitable for a music
video than for a horror flick). No, the pitfall is
not in the directing, it's in the script. It is so
full of clichés that, despite being a huge hit at
the box-office, no one will remember this movie in
5 years because it's so generic. This is certainly
horror 101. To be fair though, some of the scares
were rather effective and made me jump, but other
than that it was all just very basic. The acting
certainly won't impress anyone either.
As far as PG-13 rated horror flicks go, The Unborn
isn't awful. It's generic, it's silly and there are
a couple of unintentional laughs hiding in here but
it's not awful. When one sits in that chair watching
the movie go by one has to ask himself - will movies
like The Unborn be remade 30 years from now? If so,
I see a sad future for horror movies. Anyway, if
you're a teen girl, this will be the perfect horror
flick, but if you're a horror fan, you should probably
either wait for the DVD or skip it all together.
Surprisingly violent for a PG-13 horror flick but
not a lot of gore, no.
Nice and atmospheric and the MTV music shines with
its absence. Thank god.
The Unborn isn't horrible, it's just bland. Certainly
not as bad as the trailers make it out to be (for
once). It will satisfy its core audience but it's
not something that will find a place in my DVD
collection. Generic but watchable.
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