Il mai nato

Its ironic that this movie came out the week that the nominations for the Razzie Awards were released. I have a hunch that this film may garner a few nominations for that "prestigious" award next year.

This film is awful. It has no clue where it wants to go and takes quite a lot of time getting there. The story is about young Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman). She is a girl in school, working as a babysitter for some extra money. This is when she encounters a four year-old kid that she is sitting who appears to be evil. Soon, she is seeing the evil of that kid in her daily life. To rid herself of this, she begins examining her family history. This includes a mother (Carla Gugino) who was depressed and killed herself, a mysterious old woman in her mothers photos (Jane Alexander) who has had issues in the past, and her friends. Upon recommendation, she decides to have an exorcism performed by the rabbi (Gary Oldman). If you are getting ahead of me in the plot, you've basically got it right in your mind.

The writing is mediocre, and that is perhaps kind. The beginning of the story is simply about showing as much of Ms. Yustman's body that can be allowed in a PG-13 movie. If that couldn't be done in one scene, they come back to it four or five times. The story follows cliché after cliché and takes forever to really begin. The frights are minimal and within 20 minutes I was laughing at what I think was supposed to be scary. This movie is unintentionally funny once you pick up where it is going and what it is trying to do.

The one minor redeeming factor of this movie was some of the camera work. There were a few angles that were used that felt greatly different than the others, felt fresh and felt well placed. Those few shots cannot, however, overcome some of the worst over-acting I've ever seen, a poor script, and a lack of direction for a vast majority of the film. If you are an absolute horror film junkie, go ahead and have a laugh. If you are a fan of bad movies, enjoy. If you are looking for an enjoyable fright, look elsewhere.

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

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.

What is it with movies that spend more time concentrating on nightmares than what is really happening? Don't these movie makers know that nightmares aren't really scary unless they are your own? When something freaky happens in a movie and then the character wakes up to reality that isn't scary. What is scary is when the nightmare becomes reality, like in Nightmare on Elm Street. But when someone sees bugs coming out of the walls and blood or something coming up from the toilet and monsters and all sorts of things in a public restroom and then some people walk in but none of that is there anymore all we can think is that the character in question is hallucinating which isn't very scary unless we really really care about the character. The thrills in this movie are so forced that they are boring. Very, very disappointed. Even some of the straight to DVD titles have scared me more than this formula.

I've read a lot of comments on this movie, I didn't think it was all bad. I have seen better horror movies, but this certainly wasn't the worst, someone said, that it was unoriginal, but I thought that the plot was quite original, I don't recall seeing anything similar before, but then, that's my opinion. I thought Odette Yustman was a fair leading actress as Casey and I thought her best friend Romey was quite entertaining. I have this film downloaded onto my computer, I probably would not have paid to see it at the cinema, but it's a good freebie, I've watched it several times and still find it fun to watch. I think it is worth watching.