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Released by: Universal Studios
Released on 7/7/2009
Director: David S. Goyer
Cast: Odette Yustman, Gary Oldman, Meagan Good, Cam Gigandet, James Remar
Year: 2009
The Movie:
You know, when you think about it, a movie featuring Gary Oldman as a Jewish exorcist, a monster dog with an upside down face, a creepy killer kid, and a cute brunette sounds like kind of a cool idea, but then you wind up with a movie like David S. Goyer's The Unborn and you start to wonder if maybe it wasn't such a cool idea after all.
The film follows Casey (Odette Yustman), the aforementioned cute brunette, who starts seeing those monster dogs with the upside down faces mentioned earlier and yeah, a creepy kid too. These visions take on a creepier tone when she's babysitting for the neighbors one day and just before clocking her in the face, the kid she's in charge of growls at her that 'Jumby wants to be born.' Casey heads to the doctors office where C.S. Lee from Dexter checks out the weird color changes happening in her pupil and tells her to consult a genetic counselor. When her dad, played by James Remar of The Warriors, goes away for a night, Casey decides to hump her boyfriend (Cam Gigandet) but later sees a creepy kid all tucked away inside the medicine cabinet. Oh and she's been seeing weird bugs a lot too.
After digging around in the basement, she finds out that her dead mother was actually pregnant with twins but that she was the only one of the pair to make it out of the womb alive. Daddy's tells her that the unborn kids' nickname was Jumby, and suddenly Casey realizes that something is very, very wrong here. After finding out that the weird old Jewish lady she found a newspaper clipping of in the basement is her grandmother, she decides to consult a rabbi (Gary Oldman) and have an exorcism done, because she's all of a sudden completely convinced that she's being bothered by a malevolent spirit called a Dybbuk. Lucky for them, Casey finds an ancient Jewish text at her local library, brings it to the rabbi she's only just met, and he and his crew get ready for a showdown with ol' upside down dog face and his evil posse of CGI asshats.
Without wanting to spoil it for the one or two people who will actually care, there's no shock ending here. The twist at the end is painfully obvious if you happen to pay attention to the mess of a plot and the shocks that the exorcisms sequence are supposed to provide won't scare or surprise anyone who has seen Friedkin's classic. Gary Oldman tries in his role, they guy deserves credit for that, but he can't help an otherwise wooden cast elevate this bottom of the barrel material and the film has no real impact, relying instead of obvious jump scares punctuated by loud music rather than anything even remotely resembling tone, atmosphere or legitimate tension.
On top of that, there are plot holes galore. At one point Oldman's rabbi tells Casey the exorcism won't work because she doesn't believe, but later he changes his mind and does it anyway for no discernable reason. James Remar just disappears for no reason whatsoever and Casey and her crew are able to walk away from a murder that they witnessed without so much a having to answer questions from the cops? Come on, this is just sloppy writing and given writer/director David S. Goyer's decent filmography, it's not unrealistic to expect much better from the man than what we're given here. This movie is a turd, borrowing from more original and vastly better films and delivering nothing new.
Universal provides both the PG-13 and unrated versions of the film on their Blu-ray release. I don't intend to watch it again to explain the differences.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The 2.40.1 1080p VC-1 encoded high definition anamorphic widescreen transfer is excellent across the board. The outdoor shots look fantastic, with an amazing amount of detail and clarity present, while indoor scenes fare almost as well. Shadow detail is nice and strong while black levels remain deep and consistent without breaking up or getting murky. The image is free from print damage, mpeg compression artifacts or nasty edge enhancement resulting in a clean, clear picture with great color reproduction, strong sharpness and spot on contrast.
The English language DTS-HD 5.1 track is also quite strong, with deep rich bass though there are definitely time in the film where the dialogue is too low in the mix. This is a fairly aggressive track with some very nice surround activity to note that punctuates the jump scares nicely. The levels are properly balanced and there are no problems with hiss or distortion to note. Dialogue stays clean and clear and is never hard to understand and the last fifteen minutes of the movie really do a nice job of showing off some solid directional effects and strong bass response.
The only extra, really, is a six minute clip of deleted scenes that are pretty much just useless character exposition bits. They don't change the movie at all and are presented here without any context or commentary explaining why they weren't used, but we can probably assume that it was to keep the running time down.
Aside from that, the disc has motion menus and chapter selection options and is Blu-ray Live enabled, meaning you can go online to access additional content.
The Final Word:
The Unborn looks and sounds good on Blu-ray but the movie itself is a derivative mess of a film and the almost barebones nature of this release doesn't do the film any favors.