The Unborn

Twisted horrific sights help to scare, but The Unborn's complex story confuses and bores in this exorcism themed film.

Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) is a typical young girl. She babysits, has friends, a boyfriend and she has nightmares and visions of a creepy little boy with bright blue eyes and a freaky dog.

It all begins one night while babysitting. Casey hears the little boy she's watching talking to himself and when she goes to him, he smacks her in the face and lets her know that “Jumbie wants to be born now.” The next day her one eye begins to change colour, from brown to blue. The doctor informs Casey that this is usually something that happens when someone is a twin. Casey, an only child, finds out she had a twin brother who died in the womb, and his nickname was ‘Jumbie.'


As the nightmares and visions continue, Casey decides that she needs answers. She follows a lead to a woman in a retirement home named Sofi Kozma (Jane Alexander). Sofi is one of the last people to see Casey's mother before she killed herself and Casey discovers that Sofi is her grandmother. Casey explains everything that is happening to her and asks her for help. Sofi tells her the story of her own brother, who was tortured and experimented on, and died at a young age, but then, came back to life days later. Apparently an evil Jewish spirit called a ‘dybbuck' possessed her brother and after she killed him, knowing that it wasn't her brother anymore, the spirit now haunts her family.

Casey seeks the help of Rabbi Sendak (Gary Oldman) to perform a Jewish exorcism, along with help from her boyfriend Mark (Cam Gigandet).

The Unborn was an interesting film. Twisted deformed bodies, possessed children, dogs with their heads upside down, creepy walking, freaky faces and death. While the scary parts were really scary, there weren't a lot of them, in fact most of them were featured in the trailer. Unfortunately, the scary parts of this film are over shadowed by the over complicated explanations for the supernatural events. The evil spirit, the dybbuck, comes from Jewish folklore, requiring Casey to have an exorcism by a Rabbi. The freaky dog goes with the dybbuck, and while the spirit has the name of Casey's dead twin, it takes the form of her grandmother's brother. Also, the changing eye colour goes back to the experiments performed on the grandmother's twin.

I never expect much of a plot from horror films, but it's even worse when too much explaining happens which takes the focus away from the horror and focuses it on the why.

Odette Yustman (Cloverfield) did an okay job, but I didn't feel any sympathy for her, there wasn't that connection or the hope that she will survive everything. It was more like, oh she might die, whatever. Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight) was much better and ups the ante for this film. Oldman is one of my favourite actors and he was one of the only actors in this film that wasn't cheesy and unbelievable.

I recommend this movie to anyone who likes scary movies, but doesn't mind a poor plot.

Final Words: Saw it. Meh. “Jumbie wants to be born now.” Really?