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The Unborn is a horror thriller about a young woman haunted by the spirit of her stillborn twin.
It is a remarkably stupid movie.
Odette Yustman, last seen in Cloverfield, stars as Casey Beldon, the hauntee. In the first few minutes of the movie, Casey sees a ghost child, a terrifying dog in a mask and a dead fetus -- it's a dream!!! -- and babysits for an evil kid who smashes her in the face with a mirror.
After that, her eyes go wonky, she sees ghostly things, she hears mysterious knocking, a creature screams out at her from her medicine cabinet, she visits the hospital where her mother committed suicide and later that same night, she hallucinates oceans of congealing blood, swarms of grotesque beetles and her mother's ghost in the ladies' loo at a disco.
That's just the first 20 minutes.
It feels longer.
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Meanwhile, back at the hospital, Casey encounters a Holocaust survivor who may hold the key to the convoluted action. (Not.)
The old woman (Jane Alexander, for crying out loud) tells a terrible tale of twin experiments at Auschwitz, introducing into the story the notion of a dybbuk and her own dead twin, as if there weren't enough going on.
The old woman suggests Casey get her hands on an ancient text and attempt an exorcism in her spare time. Also, Casey should smash and burn all the mirrors in her house while she's at it.
You see, mirrors and twins and all other doubling/reflecting sorts of things can be doorways for the undead to come back, or something.
Honestly, by the time you get to the third act and the hideous dead things with gaping, screaming mouths and various animals and people crab-walking with their heads on backward, you'll feel as if you've finished up a crash course in derivative horror-movie visuals.
The only thing missing in this mess is a script.
There's still one mystery left in The Unborn, and that's how a film like this could get talent along the lines of Jane Alexander, Gary Oldman (as a rabbi who performs the exorcism) Carla Gugino, Idris Elba, James Remar and current teen hunk Cam Gigandet to be part of the cast. Were they hypnotized?
The Unborn is all scares, all the time -- the fog, the gloom, the dark, the scary music, the bleak mood, the terrifying child, the horrible visions, the demonic details, the utterly moronic dialogue.
It's a pile-on of everything that goes bump in the night, and it makes people laugh in all the wrong places.
It's so insulting.
(This film is rated 14-A)