Schlock and awe
The Unborn / [Editor’s Note: Our critic has elected to reveal the conclusion to The Unborn in the penultimate paragraph of this review. Read at your own risk.]
The film The Unborn is so bad it isn’t boring. This bottom-feeder horror movie literally has more plot loopholes than any movie I’ve seen in 30 years of reviewing, and its collection of thefts from other such flicks is Hollywood larceny at its best—but more on that later. Its sole originality consists of scatology: hallucinatory giant cockroaches swarm from a glory-hole in a bathroom stall. (I’m not kidding).
And then it uses Jewish exorcism as a plot device as well as passages from the Kabbalah, scenes of Nazi doctors operating on Jewish kids in Auschwitz, a (demonic) Dybbuk, and a ga-ga Holocaust survivor (poor Jane Alexander).
Question: why does a graphic movie about exorcism manifest every time we’re compromised by a lousy U.S. president? (Break into groups, and discuss.) It was The Exorcist for Nixon, and now The Unborn for President Bush.
However, exploited Jewish lore-and-history does not remove the bad taste in one’s mouth. Here we have poor Gary Oldman, billed above the title, as a Rabbi talked into officiating over Exorcism rites in an abandoned insane asylum, aided by an Episcopalian (who gets his real good). You can munch a bagel while you sup gruel, but that doesn’t turn it into chicken soup. Oy vey.
The name of our lovely, superannuated Chicago teen heroine here is one Casey Beldon, plagued by bad dreams and hallucinations. In spite of this, her dad goes “out of town” (her mother committed suicide), leaves her alone, and, for some reason, in the age of electronic over-information, she can’t get in touch with him. Hmm.
Not only that, but funny little white patches of white begin to appear in the pupils of her eyes, explained by a doctor as—get this—genetic material from her dead brother, who was strangled in utero by Casey’s umbilical cord. Later, Casey’s grandmother tells her that a Dybbuk is coming after her. That and her boyfriend Mark, much cuter than she is, is attacked and turned mean, for a while, by the demon.
During this film, there are direct, if clumsy, steals from Cat People (1942), The Exorcist (1973), The Devil’s Backbone (2001), Spirits of the Dead (1968), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Candyman (1992) and at least seven other (and better) horror flicks.
This mimetic movie was made through the good offices of kingpin producer Michael Bay (Transformers) whose low-budget horror division (Platinum Dunes), turns out stuff like this once or twice per annum.
It is widely theorized that reviewers should not reveal the endings of movies, but you weren’t planning to see this thing, now were you? I’ll be semi-fair and give you a choice between two endings, one of them actually in The Unborn. (A) The Dybbuk enters A-Rod’s body and marries Madonna; or (B) After the carnage has ended our Casey discovers that she is…is…pregnant—with twins. Sequel, anyone?
To sum it up, let’s just say that The Unborn is ungood. Auwe.
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