The Unborn - Should have been aborted.

It seems that everything Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes production company had taken on up to this point had been a remake of a piece of my childhood.  From The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Friday the 13th, you could expect that the movies would be obviously predictable (I mean, we knew the stories already right?), but entertaining nonetheless.

Enter David Goyer's The Unborn.  This was, to quote the producers, “Just what we had been looking for in an original script.” Granted, I would have had high hopes too, coming from the man who wrote the screenplay for Dark City, The Dark Knight, and a slew of other films.  The Unborn, however, ends up being a horrible mishmash of posession/jewish exorcism/nazi experiments/fetal demise/ugh.  (Can you believe that Goyer compared his script to the likes of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist?!)

Being a huge Gary Oldman fan, I went into this willing to look PAST whatever shortcomings there were, and just sit back and be stupidly entertained for an hour and a bit. 

I just couldn't.

Odette Yustman plays the main character, Casey, and I have to wonder if Megan Fox was too booked or too expensive for them to woo with the script. Odette is a veritable clone of Fox, almost down to the cow eyed looks she splashes across the screen with such frequency.  It doesn't matter who they cast in the role at the end of the day though, because the STORY is just so badly done, no amount of professionalism or oscar worthy acting can save it.

So here is the premise of the film, some chick starts having weird encounters with strange potato bugs, starts seeing blue gloves laying in the street, her eye starts to turn blue, and it all turns out to have been because she had a twin that died in utero.  A twin who wants to be born now.  A twin named Jumby. (Jumby?)

But wait! That isn't all there is to the story! It ALSO has to do with Nazi experiments on twins during the war!  Don't forget about the Dybbuk angle, which it seems they tried to tie in with the whole dead in utero twin thing, but only half heartedly.  Oh! And this is all supposed to tie in with the fact that Casey is pregnant (though she doesn't know it until the end of the movie, and with one “baby-makin” scene in the whole film, in the middle of the film, after things have already started to go all wonky, I'm not sure how the audience is supposed to just understand that a pregnancy is totally the reason it is all crazy up in there.  One of the funniest quotes of the movie, unrelated except tangentially, is Romy, the token black friend, talking to Casey in the opening scenes about one of Casey's dreams: “That your vagina is completely disease infested.”  This in response to Casey wondering what it all means.  They then share a laugh that can only be replicated by two chicks who have gone shopping for douche together.)

The story line is so fragmented and nonsensical that it doesn't even really pay to try and make sense of the strings that tie everything together.  The story can really take a back seat, though as long as you don't mind sitting through five minutes of exposition to get to a special effect or a predictable jump.

The special effects aren't bad.  Mostly CGI and quick shots of disturbing images, but interesting.  As long as you like upside down headed dogs, people crab walking on the stairs (a la the exorcist), old people with upside down heads crab walking (a la In the Mouth of Madness),  and people with huge mouths, it will suit your taste.

A few highlights:

• Gary Oldman tootling on a glitter dusted shofar before the exorcism of Casey starts.
• Romy opening the door to the little kid, who says, in a creepy voice: “the door is now open”. (really?!)
• Casey's boyfriend killed by her own hand. (bye bye baby daddy!)
• Potato Bugs.  Come on, but Jerusalem Crickets are totally sweet.
• The evil demon/dead twin/dybbuk think is named Jumby for goodness sake.

 Um, yeah, that is really about it.

Save an hour and a half and just watch the trailer.  It has all the good parts in it.  That is what sucked me in.  I should have known better, but I'm an endless optimist when it comes to horror movies, so predictably I spend most of my time being disappointed.

This was no exception.