We get it Hollywood, little kids are creepy, you can stop making horror movies about that fact now. The Ring was good, The Omen not so much, and The Unborn continues the downward slide.
In this standard fright-an-hour-fest Odette Yustman, herein referred to as either Megan Fox Version 2 or MF2 for short (seriously, they look the same, I think when directors want Megan Fox to look hot they put Odette on screen and try and pass her off as Megan, the one noticeable difference is Odette stunning ability to close her mouth when not talking unlike Megan who has that little opening allowing us to see her teeth all the time), is being haunted by the demon that possessed her great uncle after her great uncle was killed by Nazis. Don’t worry great uncle, Brad Pitt is soon coming to your defense. The Nazi experiment scene doubles as the most uneasy scene for me, the needle to the eye is skin turning for someone with contacts who knows how much a tiny speck of dust can hurt.
To help her rid herself of the creepy kid demon, MF2 enlists the help of her newly found grandmother (creepy demon kid’s sister) and she has all sorts of information about who to talk to and what books to read and what happened and what to try and do. I realize the elderly know more than we give them credit for sometimes, but there is a point where we have to stop treating the elderly as encyclopedias in movies. Although this old lady may be an exception, she was able to tell at a very young age that her “brother” was possessed by a dybbuk in the concentration camp and killed him. Again, I realize times have changed and we’re not as religious as a whole anymore, but how many 7-8 year old kids know what a dybbuk is. Kids aren’t usually aware of abstract religious beliefs.
The book is another funny part, not only does the grandmother know what book she needs to get, but the first library she goes to magically has seemingly the original copy, and what could be the only copy. What good luck for someone being harassed by a dybbuk. But she finds the book, finds a rabbi to perform the exorcism, speaking of which that movie was made in the 80’s, how long until we see a remake of that. And of course, like any good exorcism everybody helping dies, except for the rabbi who survives the ordeal, good job dude. But exorcisms work, so she’s free of her dybbuk, unfortunately for her, she’s now got two other little kids growing inside of her that will soon make her life just as bad and she can’t run from them and Dad died in the exorcism, so she gets to play single mother too. I’m guessing if the movie would have had better success there would be an Unborn 2 in the making. Hopefully we’ve stopped that though.
This is the “Unrated” cut that comes with the theatrical version and the unrated version. If you see this version in stores, go ahead and light it on fire and throw it at the nearest sales associate and then get the standard version. Here’s the difference between the two, in the theatrical version they talk about having sex, then jump to post act when they’re talking to each other, in the unrated version there is approximately 5 seconds of the boyfriends back with a humping motion. Obviously couldn’t be seen in theaters because it’s a man’s back, think of the children. Second difference I noticed. When they are talking about the exorcism in the basketball gym before doing it, the priest asks for MF2 and her boyfriends IDs. In the words of the boyfriend, “Really?” Asking for IDs is unrateable? Really? You could keep those two scenes in and still get a PG-13 rating. There has been much worse in many other PG-13 movies.
Acting is about what you’d expect from a horror movie of this caliber. MF2 is solid in the role although she seems to be one of those people who shouldn’t be forcing themselves to cry, but that’s like a lot of people. You never really feel that scared for her since everything is dreams and visions that stop as soon as someone else is around. No one else really has that big of a role to have a serious affect on the movie.
The Unborn is presented in 2.40:1 Anamorphic Widescreen format and 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound.
The airborne shots are pretty cool. And the overall look of the movie is pretty good. There are a couple weird little jump cuts, but nothing too bad. The sound was pretty quiet, I had to crank the TV up a ways to hear some of the quieter parts. Even with that the jump noises weren’t too bad.
There are a couple deleted scenes. One with Mark saying goodbye after Casey saw the kid behind the mirror, I don’t know why it was even shot because it makes no impact on the movie. Another is just an extended ending with her running before finding out she’s preggers. Another one at her mom’s grave which probably could have made it in, but it doesn’t really affect it one way or another.
Overall the deleted scenes were not important and easily cut.
The Unrated Cut is absolutely stupid. Stay away from that version like the plague. The standard version isn’t that fantastic either. If you wait five months it will probably make its way to the five dollar bin pretty quickly. If you’re watching it now, you’re watching it for Megan Fox version 2 (now with the ability to close her mouth) and even that isn’t worth it.
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