The Unborn, 2009

I was looking forward to seeing Gary Oldman in a horror flick, so I'm sorry to say that "The Unborn" is a failure. In fact, Oldman is one of the reasons that it's so irredeemably awful. The acting is atrocious throughout. Lead Yustman and sidekick Good deserve special recognition; I predict a Razzie. The cast doesn't deserve all of the credit for this movie being one of the worst bombs to hit cinemas in years. Writer/Director Goyer deserves his due for a formulaic and plot hole riddled screenplay. When the lead is referred to a bewildered rabbi who knows nothing about exorcisms but manages to translate an occult tome into English overnight, we can only ask, "Huh?" Is it so easy to simply walk out of a library with a rare manuscript without setting off an alarm? We're told that Casey's father is going out of town on business for a night, but he never comes back to discover that his daughter has trashed his house. Characters know about conversations for which they weren't present. The writing combined with bad acting is enough to sink any movie. It gets worse! The CG monsters may look good in trailers, but in context they're laughable (and the audience did laugh in the screening I was at). The whole upside-down head thing is unintentionally funny. The movie's attempts at scares fall flat, including the climactic exorcism. Adding 2 scenes in which we get tight shots of Yustman's backside doesn't help; they're gratuitous, but I suppose give the marketing dept something interesting to put on posters. The coup de grace is delivered by Oldman himself. He has an American accent through most of the film, but in his last scene it's British. Did no one catch this in editing? Big, stinky bomb. I'd be surprised if it runs for a week in theaters.

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