The Unborn (2009)
Average Rating: 3.2/10
Reviews Counted: 115
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 102
David Goyer's Unborn is a tame genre effort with cheap thrills and scares that border on silliness.
Average Rating: 3.7/10
Critic Reviews: 19
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 14
David Goyer's Unborn is a tame genre effort with cheap thrills and scares that border on silliness.
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Average Rating: 2.7/5
User Ratings: 810,160
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Movie Info
Blade II and Batman Begins scribe David S. Goyer writes and directs this supernatural thriller about a 19-year-old girl (Odette Yustman) haunted by a "dybbuk" (a malevolent wandering soul of Jewish folklore) that was once a young boy ruthlessly slaughtered in Auschwitz. Casey Beldon (Yustman) was just a young girl when her mother vanished out of her life. And though Casey has never forgiven her mother for abandoning their family, she begins to understand why when a tortured ghost begins stalking
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Cast
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Odette Annable
Casey Beldon -
Gary Oldman
Rabbi Sendak -
Cam Gigandet
Mark Hardigan -
Meagan Good
Romy Marshall -
James Remar
Gordon Beldon -
Jane Alexander
Sofi Kozma -
Idris Elba
Father Arthur Wyndham -
Atticus Shaffer
Matty Newton -
Michael Sassone
Eli Walker -
Ethan Cutkosky
Barto -
Rhys Coiro
Mr. Shields -
Carla Gugino
Janet Beldon -
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All Critics (115) | Top Critics (19) | Fresh (14) | Rotten (104) | DVD (8)
[An] exuberantly creepy mash-up of Jewish folklore, J-horror atmospherics, and demonic possession boilerplate.
Top CriticDavid S Goyer's non-kosher riff on 'The Exorcist' is stillborn,
Goyer has penned many scripts superior to this one, but he does make sure you're never far away from a big 'Boo!'
Filmed in Chicago but universal in its lameness...The Unborn is the story of a dybbuk who makes trouble for the skinny North Shore college girl played by Odette Yustman, who's always out jogging when she should be considering a sandwich.
A laughably bad horror flick involving demonic possession, concentration camps and torturous genetic experiments.
This is where many a horror movie falls and never again rises: too much exposition.
I kept hoping Oldman would revert to his Sid & Nancy punk persona and kick the little freak in the yarbles like some pain-deserving Springsteen fan, but no such luck.
Unoriginal, unbelievable, utterly unwatchable.
While David S. Goyer is a fine writer and a powerhouse name in Hollywood, his directing efforts fall flat.
Smoking-hot heroine. Clever paranormal premise. Painfully clueless conclusion.
The Unborn is packed full of grisly images and effects, but its apparent attempts to be some kind of Jewish take on The Exorcist fail miserably.
The best that can be said for Goyer's latest is that it's competent. How competent is a matter of debate, as is the degree to which Goyer is self-aware about the film's camp value. [Blu-ray]
Should have been aborted.
What The Unborn represents manages to be a thousand times more disturbing than anything Goyer captured with his pen or camera
[Blu-Ray]Truth be told, The Unborn isn't horrible. It just isn't very good either. The stork wore black. File this one under stillborn.
There is a senseless scare every 5-7 minutes. Now, after one or two you start to get the giggles but after the third or fourth false scare you begin to Laugh Out Loud.
...boasts few attributes designed to initially capture the viewer's interest...
The Unborn is like a scary movie sentence without the necessary linking verbs. It's all genre gears and no motivational motor.
The Unborn is a story that should have remained untold and will be forgotten by the end of the weekend.
'Tis the season of the Hollywood dumps -- which is too bad because I had harbored some small hope for this latest horror offering from David S. Goyer.
Full of cheap thrills that mostly consist of people popping up out of nowhere and dialogue comprised largely of theological gobbledygook.
Some of the ideas here may seem original, if questionable, but the treatment -- by writer-director David Goyer -- is strictly conventional, with the shock moments obviously inserted at regular intervals, usually while the heroine is in her underwear.
After a few initial decent scares, the corny dialogue, poor casting and cringe-worthy acting drag this movie into it's own hell. Utter rubbish.
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Foreign Titles
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A plot you could see coming a mile off. I mean, seriously, if you had a creepy ass kid telling you some devil child wants "to be born now", and multiple other scary going ons, you would think at very least you would abstain from sex with your boyfriend! Apparently not...
There is a few scares and some yucky scenes, but it is pretty lame and tame stuff. Also, I don't know if it was the TV transmission or what, but the end scene seemed sped up, which made me feel like I was watching a video game instead of a movie!
If you just want some dumb entertainment or a laugh, this is okay, but there is definitely much better horror films out there.