Cinema review
Directed by David S Goyer
Starring Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, Meagan Good, Cam Gigandet, Idris Elba, Jane Alexander
Release date 27 February 2009 (UK)

Casey (Yustman) is a college student troubled by dreams of a spooky child. Turns out the kid is a demon from Jewish folklore called a dybbuk which is hell bent on inhabiting her body. It also transpires Casey had a twin who died in the womb and the whole saga began in Auschwitz...

There’s no point in mixing words when presented with something like The Unborn. It is entirely terrible, nothing but a series of cheap and tired tricks through which lifeless characters parade like automatons, devoid of redeeming features. Every tactic employed to scare comes verbatim from the well worn book of horror clichés: the drawn out suspense sequences, the eerie then jolting score, the false shocks; everything down to the de rigueur twist at the close.

Even a horror novice could predict what’s coming a good 10 minutes in advance. For anyone acquainted with the genre the experience will prove as engrossing as the subjection to a dull and convoluted anecdote, heard many times before, told by an idiot who alternates between a flat monotone and hushed whisperings, punctuated by sudden shouts and exclamations.

The only vaguely enjoyable sequence is ripped right from The Exorcist, the plot doesn’t hang together and the film’s attempt to anchor all its nonsense to the gravity of the Holocaust is embarrassing, to say the least. Really, that’s what makes The Unborn so objectionable: it is a thoroughbred piece of disposable trash yet, for some unfathomable reason, wants to be taken seriously.

So laughable is the film in concept and execution that there’s an outside chance it could have worked as a comedy. But The Unborn treats itself with such dour gravitas that a schism develops between what it believes itself to be and the preposterous mess the audience endures. Bereft of any original or interesting ideas, a little humour or, at least, self-mockery, could have made the whole thing more palatable. Joe Green

VERDICT: 1/10
A film that should have been aborted at conception, those responsible should hang their heads in shame.