Movie #002- The Unborn

Released: January 9th, 2009
Length: 1hr 27min
Genre: Horror
Director: David S. Goyer
Starring: Odette Yustman

Most would agree that supernatural thrillers like "The Unborn" aren't viewed with high expectations. But even by lower standards, this movie falls flat on its face. If it's not over exploiting Yustman's physical beauty, its using cliche' scare tactics that are predictable and unimaginative (upside down heads?) The story line is so vague and confusing, the alleged "twist ending" in the final few seconds is almost entirely pointless. The movie explore a Jewish mythology of a mysterious paranormal demon called a dybbuk, which is trying to seek entrance into our world. However, the explanation to its origin and why it has chosen Casey Beldon (Yustman) are hand-waved with a fancy World War II flashback from Casey's grandmother which actually doesn't offer any explanations at all. Casey also experiences a lot of strange flashbacks to her mother's death (allegedly caused by the dybbuk) but the emotional impact of this trauma is overacted by Yustman, who's dialogue feels like she's reading it off a cue-card. All of the characters seemed to be unrealistic and talk to eachother like they've rehearsed it a million times. There are a lot of convenient hand-waves in this movie, where everything just sort of happens nicely and without a lot of effort on the characters (like the strange old woman being Casey's grandmother, the Book of Mirrors being found in about three milliseconds, and Casey figuring out that her never-born twin is trying to kill her without any reason to jump to that outlandish conclusion). All in all this story is strange and really hard to watch. I actually stopped it 55 minutes in and went to sleep because I honestly was bored to tears. It has a few moments that make you jump, only because its a scary face with a loud noise and it offers very little in the ways of actual horror. The climactic scene at the end has its positives, and was the most entertaining ten minutes of the movie, but don't get me wrong it fails at producing an interesting, plausible and understandable storyline. Avoid at all costs (Unless you just want to stare at Odette Yustman)

Score: (48/100) F
Characters- D
Story- F
Visual/Presentation- F