The Movie

The Blazers recently struck out on their quest to lure free agent forward Hedo Turkoglu to town. Don’t worry, I know this is supposed to be a movie review. When the information came out that Hedo and his family wanted to instead move to Toronto, I was relieved to find out it was because they wanted to be in a more international city with a significant Turkish population. I can respect that. I hate it when athletes forsake a good situation just to squeeze out a few extra bucks. To a guy like me there really isn’t much difference between 8 million dollars and 10 million.

This is what I was thinking about when I watched The Unborn and I realized that it’s not only athletes who pimp themselves for cash. Actors are no better. Take a look at the film’s cast list: Gary Oldman (awesome), Carla Gugino (sweet), and rising star Idris Elba (cool)! By all that is holy, I do not know what they were thinking when they signed up for this clunker. When you consider it was written and directed by David Goyer, one of the co-writers of The Dark Knight, you’d assume the movie would be decent if not awesome.

Speaking of which, let’s look at the career of writer/director David Goyer because it’s a tale of polar opposites. On one hand, Goyer has written some of the best comic book adaptations around (Blade, Blade 2, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight). All those movies kick butt, but don’t get too excited because Goyer also wrote The Crow: City of Angels (I rewound the videotape about a half hour into it and took it back to the store), brought his excellent Blade series to a crashing end with Blade: Trinity (which he wrote and directed) and also made possibly my least favorite movie of 2007, The Invisible. There's a lot more straight-to-video schlock on his resume, so while Goyer has done some awesome work he also spends half of his time living in Hack City.

The Unborn deals with a young lady who starts experiencing nightmarish and unexplainable visions. These bring back memories of her mother, who committed suicide in an asylum when she was a young girl. It turns out her family has a dark secret and a demon is tormenting her for revenge. Along the way, the story touches on the Holocaust, secret Nazi experiments and Jewish mysticism.

I’m sure there are some personal elements in this film for Goyer, but we’ll never know and frankly I’m not sure I care. I can tell you that Goyer has looked into the "How to Make a Horror Film level 101 Student Guide" and has taken all his filmmaking cues from that book. The Unborn isn’t scary and while there are a few moments of decently creepy special effects, the film is actually laughable. The supposedly "scary" scenes, which are clearly and blatantly telegraphed, consist of jump scares, accompanied by a sound technician turning the volume knob to eleven. It’s a silly, boring, garden variety horror flick devoid of any imagination or creativity. Oh yeah, Goyer manages to rip off The Ring as well.

Oldman, Elba and Gugino should all be embarrassed by this one, but no more so than David Goyer himself. I honestly hope this talented trio of actors didn’t just make this for the money. They’re better than that. Turkoglu didn't do it to the Blazers (hopefully) and they shouldn't do it to the movie-going public either. It’s more likely Goyer is holding some deep dark secrets over them and forced them to make his movie.

Watching The Unborn with a group of your friends won’t help and neither will alcohol (believe me, I tried). It’s the longest 90 minutes you’ll have experienced in a long time and I was more entertained that same day spending that same amount of time waiting for my new tire at Les Schwab. David Goyer directed my least favorite film of 2007 (The Invisible), co-wrote the best movie of 2008 (The Dark Knight) and has returned to rock bottom with The Unborn, my least favorite film of 2009. Skip it and forget it.

1 out of 5

The DVD

The Unborn looks good but really, who cares. The disc comes with a few deleted scenes but nothing else. Oh wait. There's a theatrical release and an unrated version, but guess what? The unrated version runs a whopping one minute longer. Doesn't sound like much to me. I'm curious as to what was put back in, but at one minute, I'm not about to try and find out.

DVD rating
2 out of 5