| | | Evil will do anything to live.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, English, Spanish, French, Dolby, Dolby Digital (5.1)
Enter a world of unrelenting evil as terror finds a new form in The Unborn. From the producers of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the co-writer of The Dark Knight comes this shocking supernatural thriller about a young woman (Odette Yustman) plagued by chilling dreams and tortured by a demonic ghost that haunts her waking hours. Her only hope to break the debilitating paranormal curse is in an exorcism with spiritual advisor Sendak (Gary Oldman). See what lies beyond the doorway of our world in this non-stop nightmare of the undead.
"[Goyer] does make sure you're never far away from a big "Boo!"" Clark Collis, Entertainment Weekly
"What more could a horror fan ask for..." Jason Buchanan, TV Guide
Editor's Note
A horror film combining ghostly children, Nazi experiments, and the Kabbalah, THE UNBORN also features a strong female heroine and plenty of surprisingly gruesome shocks. Writer-director David S. Goyer (BLADE: TRINITY) has seemingly taken inspiration from classics like ROSEMARY?S BABY (1968) and THE EXORCIST (1974), as well as the more recent THE EYE (2002), during the creation of this slick thriller featuring an attractive young cast and some disturbing effects work. College student Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman, CLOVERFIELD) begins having dreams about a spooky little boy with bright blue eyes. She thinks nothing of it as first, but when the image becomes a recurring motif and the boy she babysits for hits her in the face and tells her "Jumby wants to be born now," she begins to get frightened. After learning that she had a twin brother who died in utero, she finds a photo of her late mother with the same ghostly child looming in the background. A newspaper clipping then leads Casey to visit an elderly Holocaust survivor (Jane Alexander) in a nursing home. The woman clues her in to a dark family secret extending back to WWII, which prompts her to employ the services of Rabbi Sendak (Gary Oldman), whose skepticism about evil spirits is vanquished when he sees what he is up against. Goyer?s pacing is brisk, and the THE UNBORN?s jolts start right out of the gate. Yustman is an appealing lead, and the surprising presences of veterans Oldman and Alexander add some weight to the proceedings. The violence is never too graphic, but a few of the sequences are surprisingly icky, as are some of the supernatural beings that pop up. The result is a fun thriller that crams a lot of spookiness into its PG-13 rating.
| Features | Audio: English, French, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround | | Deleted Scenes | | Includes Both Original Theatrical & Unrated Extended Versions Of The Film! | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish |
| Entertainment Reviews
 | The Unborn - DVD Review By: Chris Cabin - filmcritic.com DVD Reviews Published on: 6/26/2009 7:44 PM | |
In a world bereft of rationality, such as that of popular Hollywood, Odette Yustman could play the slightly-younger sister (or, heck, even twin) of somebody like Jessica Alba, and it's fitting that their careers seem to be synching up. Almost a year to the day after Alba started seeing ghosts from a pair of haunted peepers in The Eye, Yustman begins seeing ghosts because -- well, gosh, I don't know why -- in David S. Goyer's sophomore effort as writer/director, The Unborn. Yustman plays Casey Beldon, a college student who suddenly begins seeing scorpions in her eggs, dogs with masks, and all sorts of other crazy things. Her doctor gives her the boring reason: genetic mosaicism, a retinal irregularity usually seen in twins....read the full review |
| The Unborn (Unrated) - DVD Review By: Brian Holcomb - Cinema Blend DVD Reviews Published on: 7/15/2009 1:44 AM | | Odette Yustman from Cloverfield stars as Casey, a young underwear model tormented by strange visions of a mean little boy in pale white makeup who keeps saying something about "Gumby" needing to be born. Turns out this is the spirit of her unborn and dead twin brother, strangled to death by her umbilical cord while still in the womb. Or so says Casey's father played by '80s heavy James Remar ( 48 Hours) which is enough to make you suspect he's lying and behind some elaborate plot to drive his daughter insane for her inheritance. But he turns out to be a good guy, oddly, leaving no reason for casting Remar in the first place. ...read the full review |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Universal |
| Release Date: 1/3/2010 |
| Running Time: 88 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2009 | | Catalog ID: 62106424 | | UPC: 00025195054645 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 2.40:1 |
| Cast & Crew
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| | Professional Reviews | Entertainment Weekly
"[THE UNBORN] comes across like a Jewish EXORCIST....[Director Goyer] does make sure you're never far away from a big 'Boo!'" -- Grade: B- 01/16/2009Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "[Goyer] manages to sustain an effective, doom-laden mood....Goyer also invests in a barrage of genuinely unsettling images..." 03/01/2009 A Nutshell Review 6 of 10
Written and directed by David S. Goyer, who is still in his infancy in being at the helm of feature films, but no stranger to writing screenplays from the horror genre to the reboot of the Batman franchise, you would have thought that he might have steered clear of the usual cliches that plague a horror film. Imagine that the following all made it to his film The Unborn - mirrors, demonic kids, setting in toilets, insects, darkened corridors, dogs, haunting nightmares, and of course, a pretty woman in the lead...I suspect that there probably was some unceremonious tinkering to the story, or in having some sections rearranged during post, which accounts for the rather choppy narrative. Some parts didn't gel too well, and stuck out like a sore thumb when you feel that it's chronologically messy. There were very little scary moments, to my surprise, though I had to admit there were some "instant" scare moments that genuinely made me (ahem, and the audience) jump at our seats. Credit too has to be given to the make up team, and the special effects crew for rigging some really insane visuals, though the spidery walking scene with heads upside down reminded me of The Exorcist...And if homage is Goyer's idea here, then there were additional attempts, and the one which made me burst our laughing, was the mention that holy books and instructional manuals on shooing the devil away, are only effective if the users truly have immense faith and belief in this sort of things. Fright Night was the film that said something similar to the effect that it stuck on me, and hearing something along the same lines just cracked me up...But a comedy this is not, just that it's quite economical in the way this is shot, relying on the usual build ups and the cliche springing of surprises when you (least) expected them to. If only the finale didn't degenerate into an all out, free for all action fest given the keen anticipation it had built up, nor if it had resembled Fallen too in a way of how the ghouls here are capable of travelling, this would probably have been a more than above average flick.
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