The Unborn (2009)

the audience applauded

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

I'm no film critic. If a film has bad lighting, I normally won't notice something like that so if you're looking for that, you're reading the wrong review. Another thing, I've noticed that a lot of good horror movies get bad reviews. I think it's because everyone's different. The things that scare you may not scare me. My Mom and I have been watching a lot of Netflix movies. We've watched some good movies, some OK movies, and some really BAD movies! It was my turn to choose & I landed on this movie. I saw Gary Oldman's name (someone I recognized) & decided to watch it. I think it had a great story and I think it was original. Sure, it had some typical horror movie effects & ideas. But name me a film that doesn't! It began pretty fast, jumping right into the story. Casey Beldon is your typical teen. She lives with her Dad & has a boyfriend (Cam Gigandet), friends, and goes to school (I assume college). She does babysit for some extra money (a young Atticus Shaffer). She has kind of a sad past which you'll find out about. Things start going bad for her when she starts having these frightening dreams at night & visions of a kid she's never seen before during the day. This takes her several different places to try and find answers to her questions. The acting was good, along with the actors I mentioned, I was pleasantly surprised to see Carla Cugino and Idris Elba too. Oh, you may want to watch holding a drink during this movie because you may end up wearing it. The movie was so good, I was nervous that the ending would be dumb. That's definitely something you shouldn't be nervous about! I didn't see it coming and those are the best kinds of endings, right?

Any movie that features Odette Annaballe in every scene has an automatic plus. The woman is not only gorgeous but cinematic and the two are not always the same thing. Wowsa. That said, the film has a few dozen major breakdowns, not the least of which is attempting to imitate in one way or another far better films, The Ring, The Sixth Sense, The Exorcist, The Omen, and a host of minor films that had essentially the same jump scenes but did them much better. They did try to put together a cohesive movie and gave us the gift of Ms. Annabelle as noted and for that I think it is worth a middling value. You can do better and you can do worse.

In Chicago, Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) has disturbing dream of a boy, a dog and a baby. She's babysitting Matty when he tells her that Jumby wants to be born now. Her doctor explains that she was a twin and genetic material was transferred to her affect her eyes. After work is done on her eyes, she starts having visions. Her father tells her that her twin brother died in utero and they named him Jumby. Sofi Kozma is a Holocaust survivor and she turns out to be her grandmother with a scary ghost story.There may be a good ghost story here. The dead twin's spirit is a good start. Then Goyer adds in the Holocaust and Jewish mysticism to muddy the waters. The movie becomes undecipherable. The movie is sold with Odette in her underwear. It also has some interesting possession stuff but mostly it's a mess.

Seeing an evil spirit everywhere around her, a young woman finds that is the dead soul of her stillborn twin brother attempting to reenter the world it should've been born into and tries to stop it from succeeding in its wishes.On the whole this one was a highly enjoyable effort with a lot to like about it. One of the better parts to this one is the film's rather impressive amount of encounters throughout here, which is pretty rampant along the way. The opening dream, with the mask-wearing dog and the fetus in the jar, sets things up nicely as to the possibilities of what's going on in here as this builds incredibly nicely into the later scenes of the insects crawling after her, the ghost attack in the bathroom, and the growing number of sightings in her life being quite fun. This is furthered by the fine attacks throughout here, most notably the manifestation in the club appearing from the bathroom stall amidst a swarm of insects and otherworldly hands breaking through the walls while another rather creepy scene of her dreaming of the ghostly being violently clawing into her womb. Even more enjoyable in the first half here is the build-up of other great factors throughout with the eye problems and voices that are all nicely explained here with the stories of the spirit wanting to cross over from fore and the connection with twins that nicely explains all the different events and connections in here. That as well follows through into the film's best point in its final half as the explanations are all given and focuses the best action here with the enraged creature using its best tricks and most furious attacks here, from the deformed being chasing after the woman in the retirement home, the brutal stalking of the best friend in by the demonically-encouraged child and the finale here with the big exorcism taking place in the abandoned church where everything comes together into a grand time. The different rites that need to be performed, the setting and the main sequence of it throwing the equipment around to disrupt the ceremony followed by the possessed participants of the ceremony making for some thrilling, exciting action. These here all manage to hold off the few small, barely detrimental flaws here. The most obvious feature this one is the rather convoluted and complex plot that doesn't give off all sorts of questions here. There's little here that makes sense, as the supposed art that would've explained this in the back-story to the concentration camp only tells of the type of creature but nothing else and it leaves this one with all sorts of unanswered questions throughout the film. As well, the other flaw here is the obviously toned-down feeling in here in regards to the sleaze and kills, deliberately missing those elements yet purposefully trying to appeal in that regard with brutal, bloodless kills and scenes of her continuously in her underwear but blocks out the shower scene and keeping it to the aftermath of the sex scene. These here hold it down, but it's still better than expected.Rated PG-13: Violence and Language.