- Do you want to know how I atone for my sins? I go see movies that are too horrible to comprehend so that I can clearly define to you their precise manner of awfulness in hopes that you may be spared the horrendous agony of burning for
all eternity95 minutes in hell. I suffer to save you $12.50!(Also, I’m stimulating the economy.)
- Obviously I only saw this for Gary Oldman. He has precisely three scenes:
- Winding up what is likely an AA meeting (ooh, Gary, how self-referential!), followed by the female lead begging him to translate a mystical Hebrew text about Jewish exorcism. (Run time: 4 minutes)
- The translation of said text. (Run time: 1.5 minutes)
- The actual exorcism. (Run time: 10 minutes)
15.5 minutes of screen time (by my best guesstimate) and he’s billed second. Now, obviously he’s got nothing on Judi Dench in Shakespeare In Love, but still. Like with all his other non-Harry Potter and non-Batman films of this decade, this really could have gone straight to DVD. I would have bought it on eBay for $2.99, paid $5 in shipping, and saved myself $4.50 in the long run.
I just… I just don’t understand it. A man of his infinite talent does not need to be doing stuff like this. I know that at this point in his career he’s not all that interested in acting anymore (fair enough) and that he likes working on projects where he can be home with his kids for dinner (also fair enough), but come on. Surely bad horror films aren’t the only movies that get made 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday?
Also, having grown accustomed to his Commissioner Gordon Moustache of Awesome™, I forgot that without facial hair he’s got no upper lip.
- I’m probably in the wrong position to judge this movie, seeing as I don’t watch horror films, but this was schlocky and stupid and not very scary. Why do evil demons in movies always inhabit young male children with pale eyes who look vacant under high-contrast processing? I think my greatest problem with movies like this is my inability to suspend my disbelief at all the random shit that happens. Like… bugs everywhere, for what point and purpose? Aside from being part of the main character’s hallucinations, that is. Abandoned hospitals, creepy old-age homes, etc. Yawn. The foetus jar was pretty gross, I will admit.
- I thought everyone looked pretty under dressed considering what the weather looked like (i.e. winter in Chicago).
- Worst line of the entire movie: “It has fallen upon you to finish what was started in Auschwitz.” I’m serious.
See, the Nazis were fascinated by twins because they felt they could figure out wonderful amazing things about human genetics by “experimenting” on twins in concentration camps. Naturally, the protagonist’s grandmother was one of these twins, only her twin brother died during the experimentation. BUT THEN HE CAME BACK! Only it wasn’t him, it was a demon that used his body as a door to the world of the living. Or something. They couldn’t kill the demon, blah blah blah, and now it’s out to get Casey, our scantily-clad heroine, who was supposed to be a twin herself but her brother died in utero. (So now she has the strength of a grown man and a little baby.) I presume the demon inhabited her clinically-depressed mother as well and killed the brother, but I wasn’t paying that close enough attention when they were explaining that part. Naturally, the film ends with Casey herself being pregnant, with the evil kid next door telling us that she’s somehow now carrying her twin brother because “Jumby”, a.k.a. her brother, wants to be born and he wants to be born NOW. Um… no. There’d be a sequel if anyone actually cared about this movie.
- Truthfully, the only real reason to see this movie is for the part where Gary Oldman gets to blow this massive twisty and bedazzled animal horn to kick off the exorcism proceedings. Greatest moment he’s had on film in years, and I’m totally counting that part where he took out the trash in Batman Begins. Oh man, he can exorcise me any day.
- I’m not sure why I’m pretending to be shocked at how terrible this was.
The Unborn
The things I do for Gary Oldman, I tell you.
IMDB Plot Synopsis A young woman fights the spirit that is slowly taking possession of her.