Potential for an unborn story
Rarely do I request horror movies to review because the genre and I have worn thin together. Not since Scream have I been terrified to wits end that I just wanted to keep the lights on. It takes a lot for me to get unnerved, but it takes very little for me to be disappointed. When I first saw the trailer for The Unborn I thought for sure that this sucker had potential. It looked scary, it had Gary Oldman in it (he doesn’t take every role) and David Goyer wrote it (writer of such films as Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Flash (upcoming film)), so it couldn’t be that bad. Plus, the scenes in the trailer looked positively terrifying. It certainly didn’t look and feel like a crappy teen-horror flick that was put together to satisfy drunken college students.
To be honest, it had potential to break out of that mold, but thanks to a broken story (and not a great choice for a main character) it seemed to fall short.
The good stuff first. I loved the idea of a demon trying to make its way out of hell/limbo and into a body. Since Constantine, I have always been fascinated with demons/devils trying to fight their way into the real world. The mere thought of such an action is scary as, well, hell. The general storyline follows that our main character, Casey (played by Odette Yustman — famous for her role as Beth in Cloverfield), has a family bloodline that has been followed by a demon. This demon has been trying to work its way out of a body in the family and into the real world since her grandmother’s experience at Auschwitz. Because her grandmother killed the demon (can’t really kill a demon because it’s already dead) and closed the gate to the world, it’s now out for revenge on the family. First it took Casey’s mother and now it’s taking Casey. Creeped out? It’s very creepy. Slowly but surely, Casey’s eyes are turning from brown to blue and when they become fully blue that means that the demon has completely possessed Casey and found a way out. Casey must find help in a rabbi named Sendak who will help her exorcise the demon once and for all before it kills her.
I love the atmosphere in this film. Everything about it screams creepy. The dead of winter type of environment is perfect for the ongoing creepiness of the film. You have dead trees, cloudy skies and just a lot of darks/lights (very German expressionistic). It’s one of the more perfect set-ups for a horror film. It’s shot really beautifully, as you get some intense blues coming into play that follow around the shots everywhere. The up-close shots of the blue eyes and the creepy black hair of the kid and lead are a perfect fit for a visual horror experience. Everything visually screams this thing is going to scare the crap out of you. Just shot very well, so kudos to James Hawkinson for setting the tone. You will not feel comfortable during the film, which is perfect.
There were moments that worked hand-in-hand with the visuals. For one thing, it’s always scary as hell to see children wanting to kill. Call me crazy, but the idea of taking the most innocent beings and making them cold-hearted killers. What’s even worse is that when you include dogs with their heads upside down (and old-people), the movie takes on an entirely new level of terror. These moments of weird visuals add to the story and help move it along. These are fantastic moments and ones that you do and don’t expect most of the time.
The story set-up, or what they were shooting for on the story, combined with the visuals that Hawkinson established in the film should make the piece perfect. Let’s talk about where the wheels start to fall off.
This story looks great from far away. The story is very broken though, as it wasn’t developed on solid ground to begin with. There are tons of holes in it. The first major one is that if demon doesn’t disappear after getting killed in her grandmother’s brother’s body, how can it be stopped? Technically, you can’t stop it if that didn’t do it. You can prep yourself all you want, but that thing is going to get through no matter what. That’s a huge hole in the story and if all it took would be to exorcise the demon, why wasn’t that done before? That’s another huge story issue. These are things you have to patch up and explain somehow before you start making the story scary. You can’t simply say, “This is how it is!” because audiences won’t buy that, they have to be convinced that the main storyline is solid as a rock. That is the first major issue.
The second issue is that Yustman is simply boring. She was so-so in Cloverfield as the whiny, bitchy Beth. She is more tamed here, but her performance is completely emotionless. She screams a lot, but she never gets beyond that needy role. She never convinces the audience that she is truly fearful for her life and that she has to stop this thing. She never fully becomes the hero of the film, she’s simply a supporting role in a main role. I’m not sure what the issue is, but she just plainly isn’t entertaining enough or interesting enough to catch the audience’s eye. Sure she’s sexy, but in a horror film that doesn’t mean much. Actually, generally that means death. That was my second problem with the film.
Outside of these two big things, the other sort of fateful moment where I knew that the story was just trying to hang on was…(SPOILER AHEAD — you are warned) during the exorcism when you have Sendak (Oldman) reading lines in Hebrew with his group of friends, and Casey’s boyfriend, reading translated scripture. All hell breaks loose, the demon shows up and everyone is getting wiped out. Casey is unstrapped from her confinements and acknowledges on the way out that she only has to read one more line to complete the exorcism (she says this to her boyfriend). She then proceeds to NOT read that last line for the next ten minutes. She has about three opportunities to do it, but fails to. (SPOILER END) There were many moments in the film that left you scratching your head and saying, “That’s simply not logical.”
Let’s talk about the Blu-ray aspect of the film.
Black and Blu, scary as hell
Going back to what I said originally in regards to Hawkinson, he knew what he was doing in this film. He had a lot of ‘dead’ locales and visuals in the environments that really added to the mood of the film; because of this drabness, the HD completely benefits. The blacks and whites stand out in a 1080p set and the blue tint in the shot and the blue eyes really stand out. Again, for a horror movie this truly benefits from HD. Just like an action film, it also benefits on the audio side of things. Creepy music, creaking floors and very shocking sound effects also benefit from the Blu-ray upgrade. Coming through 7.1 surround speakers helps, but the movie’s soundtrack had to be remixed properly to get the full benefit, and it gets the full benefit.
As for features, you just get deleted scenes and two versions of the film. The two versions (theatrical and unrated) are nice. I wish there was commentary to explain some things, even explain some good intentions. You also get some good BD-Live stuff and let me just comment on that for a second. BD-Live is pretty neat so don’t discount it. It’s not just another gimmick it actually has some usage. If you haven’t experienced it, please do so.
