The Unborn

From a long line of horror movies about demonic possession, "The Unborn" comes off as tame and mostly boring.  Odette Yustman stars as Casey, a college student who suddenly becomes haunted by visions of a young boy that she doesn't know.  In her efforts to find out why this is happening to her, Casey discovers an old family curse dating back to the Nazi era when her ancestors were persecuted and used for malicious experimentation.  Now Casey is plagued by the same evil that has returned decades later to finish what it started.  Written and directed by David S. Goyer ("Blade: Trinity"), the film has a high-production-value look, with better-than-average cinematic style and mood.  There's an intense bathroom scene early on filled with creepy crawlies that successfully make the viewer squirm in their seat.  But everything else about this film is so generic that the little classy touches are like putting lipstick on a pig.  Yustman plays another damsel in distress (much like her previous role in "Cloverfield") who screams and cries prettily, if not a bit robot-like.  The big question is, what is Gary Oldman - who, I should mention, is one of my all-time favorite actors - doing in a film like this?  Oldman, playing the rabbi who Casey turns to for help, seems so out of place and even looks a bit lost at times, like he took a wrong turn somewhere and somehow ended up here.  Oldman dutifully performs the required roof-shaking, floor-quaking exorcism that the finale depends on, but other than that there isn't much for him to do.  With such promising directing and an interesting Jewish-mysticism mythology, you would expect this movie to be more captivating than it is, but instead "The Unborn" is limp and not at all scary.


2 out of 5 stars