The Unborn On Dish Network Pay Per View

Dish Network Pay-Per-View has a wide selection of movies for just about anyone. Action, drama, love, horror, comedy, thrillers – you name it, they have it. The Unborn, a supernatural horror thriller that was released to theaters in early. The Unborn was a movie I had been anticipating for awhile. It was written and directed by David S. Goyer (who co-wrote both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) and it was produced by Platinum Dunes, who have produced several of my favorite remakes of the last few years – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Amityville Horror (and currently in post-production on A Nightmare On Elm Street - yay!) The trailer for the movie looked super creepy with disturbing imagery (such as a dog in a mask or an old man twisted like a crab and crawling up a flight of stairs).

How could this go wrong? Well I’m sad to say, it kind of did. The movie stars Odette Yustman (who previously played the damsel in distress in the awesome Cloverfield) as Casey Beldon, a young girl who is being plagued by nightmarish visions. With the help of her boyfriend Mark (Cam Gigandet, from Twilight and Never Back Down) and her supportive best friend Romy (Meagan Good from The Love Guru and Saw V), Casey vows to discover the mystery behind her visions. As it turns out, she had a twin who died in the womb, and she begins to suspect that the spirit haunting her is the soul of her dead twin wanting to be born so it can transfer to the world of the living.

If this sounds silly to you, let me tell you, it is. Her dead twin was given a nickname “Jumby”, and every time someone uttered the name it didn’t give me chills, just reminded me of Jambi the Genie from “Pee Wee’s Playhouse.” Not the best way to creep out the audience by giving your main villain a cutesy nickname. There are some things in the movie that work. Several of the disturbing images – the old man crab-walk, the dog with the mask, the dog with the upside down head – are effective and original, and the special effects are up to par. Clocking in at just under ninety minutes, this movie is tight and wastes no time getting on with the story.

Case in point: our heroine learns she had a twin, meets the grandmother she never knew she had, then loses said grandmother all in the span of about twenty minutes. Like I said, the movie doesn’t waste any time. As for the acting, it’s what you’d expect from a horror movie. Yustman is a slightly amateurish actress and not convincing enough to carry an entire movie by herself. She worked fine as a supporting player in Cloverfield, but here she is supposed to be the focal point of the story, and I just wasn’t buying her. Good plays the standard best friend role just fine, though she does say “dude” a lot.

Gigandet is also passable as the understanding boyfriend despite disappearing halfway into the movie and then reappearing again towards the end. (I much prefer seeing him play the bad boy, which he did so well in Never Back Down, so it’s a little unsettling to see him so nice here!) And Gary Oldman gets top billing here as the rabbi who Casey enlists to perform a Jewish exorcism on her, though he doesn’t appear until about forty-five minutes into the movie. One can only guess he agreed to do the film as a favor to Goyer, who wrote for him in both Batman films. In the end, I would only recommend this to diehard horror fans or someone looking for a good laugh. Anyone who has high hopes due to David S. Goyer should probably look elsewhere. When I watch a horror movie and constantly think about a Saturday morning children’s program, it’s probably not a good thing.

By: Frank Bilotta

By: Frank R. Bilotta

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Frank helps people learn about Dish Network Satellite TV, and how they can save money every month with popular Dish Network Packages. Frank and his team also help people determine if satellite internet is right for them.