Friday, January 9, 2009

The Unborn (2009)


The Unborn, written and directed by David S. Goyer follows the life of Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) who is beset by merciless dreams, and a grotesque child who she suspects is her dead twin who died in her mothers womb and now wants to be born. What is unique and so engaging about The Unborn is it steps away from horrors conventional notions of murder and afterlife and focuses on life before it even exits. In this way, the film tries to separate itself from the traditional horror narrative, but with very little success. There are repetitive shots of windows and mirrors in the film which doesn’t show the horror to be in the mirror reflection that we so often expect, but in the bathroom cabinet itself which suggests the films rejection of traditional horror conventions when it really didn’t have the authority or ingenuity to do so. Beldon discovers at the end of the film that she, herself, is also having twins, which is fairly predictable and rather ironic considering how different the film always strived to be.