It's a winter morning, the whiteness spread out to amplify the solitude of the landscape. A young woman (Odette Yustman) jogs carelessly, lost in her music, across a bridge. She pauses when she comes face to face with a child's blue glove. That's the beginning of The Unborn a film directed and written by David S. Goyer of Dark Knight fame. I have to say, going in I wasn't sure what to expect, it did seem like a typical horror-flick in the get-go and if you went into it with a scoff I suspect that's what you'd see.
In any case the story begins with Casey (Yutsman) first coming into contact with the film's antagonist the dybbuk, a spirit that escaped from Gehenna (Hebrew term for Hell). It has taken the form a small child, his skin pale with predominate black veins, and his eyes a striking blue. As the first act plays out, Casey is in disbelief and quite confused by these confounding dreams and visions she is plagued by large ants that crawl across her notebooks in school and pop out of her eggs. Her friends, obviously, are in disbelief. This leads to an investigation that leads her to realize she was, at one point, a twin, her brother-to-be died in the womb.
She meets an old Jewish woman who sends her to a rabbi, a rabbi like no other rabbi. A rabbi named Sendack played by the awesome Gary Sirius-Gordon-Ivan-Zorg-Smith-Vicious Oldman (as I like to call him), who at first is skeptical--until his own encounter. He than spearheads the exorcism that will be the film's climax. I won't spoil much more than that, as far as the story goes.
All in all I actually really enjoyed the movie. Its scares were terrifying both mentally and visually. The idea of birth being used as a vessel for evil is interesting and the strength of the heroes in such a dire circumstance is admirable (with some cool choice moments that called for a Hell yeah). Definitely a better horror movie in terms of story which deals with Jewish mythology, a dope subject unto itself, and visually the film is top notch coming off very dim with that eternal absence of light that afflicts all horror films.
If you enjoy horror flicks and Gary Oldman this film should entertain. Its story is filled with twists and turns, evil and madness. There are choice characters while some are lacking and the film avoids the gory bloodbath flicks of today for a more demonic and supernatural visual terror. I hope this was informative and enlightening, and as I go along I promise the blogs will improve. With that, check out The Unborn, and don't slip on the after-birth.
