The Unborn

Gary Oldman, what are you doing? I mean really.

This movie could have been fantastic. It had all the right ingredients for a stellar revamp of the possession/supernatural thriller. But instead we got... well... look at the movie poster. Don't get me wrong, Odette Yustman is absolutely gorgeous, but sell a movie with her ass she can't.

I had high hopes for this film ever since I saw the first preview way back when it was released in the fall. I mean, Gary Oldman as a modern day exorcist, how could that be a bad thing? He's Sirius Black for God's sake. He's fucking Dracula. But when your film's only hope for any level of credibility comes in two thirds of the way through as an underplayed, underused almost stock character, you know that someone somewhere screwed up.

And here's where "The Unborn" went wrong (said God, who can fix all bad movies but chooses not to). A) The film opens with a dream sequence, introducing the viewer to demonic images that make no sense and are never given a reason for being there. If you start your film without a comfortable sense of reality, you have nowhere to go. The audience needs to feel that they are safe before they are thrust into the world of the supernatural with nowhere to run. B) Someone did a hell of a hack job trying to paste together dialogue for our heroines. You want us to feel sympathy for these girls, right? Then don't make them sound like brainless twits. C) Even though there were a lot of amazing creature designs and images, the film didn't use them to their fullest potential and instead relied on old cliche horror tricks to get jumps instead of a deep rooted fear. When the power goes out, as it's bound to do, why is it still so light inside? Why does there have to be this atmospheric ambiance? Ever think of using actual darkness as a useful tool? And what about silence? When was the last time anybody decided to take a break from the predictable music and put the audience right in the thick of the horror with sheer silence?

Such a shame. I was so disappointed this couldn't have been better, especially with the co-writers of "The Dark Knight" and the use of one of Hollywood's best actors. One day... one day I swear there will be a film that will rival "The Exorcist" for sheer terror. Whether I'm at the helm remains to be seen...