The Unborn is a big hunk of horror hooey from director David S. Goyer that he probably pitched to the studio as Kaballah meets The Exorcist and it will either creep you out or leave you on the floor laughing your head off.

The plot has something to do with a nubile college student (Odette Yustman) being harassed by the evil spirit of a young boy who sees her as his ticket back into the land of the living. She gets help and concerned glances from her boyfriend (Cam Gigandet), best friend (Meagan Good) and ultimately a rabbi (Gary Oldman).

I admire that Goyer (Blade Trinity) for the most part eschews visual effects in favor of the on-set variety, much like he did with his underrated The Invisible, and that he at least starts the film off in an appropriately surreal mood. He also shoots the snowy landscape in crisp fashion and includes a genuinely scary scene in which an old man with an upside-down head crawls up some stairs.

But the film as a whole is exceptionally ridiculous, as Goyer throws in everything from twins and mirrors to Nazi experiments and pounds of potato bugs in a desperate effort to scare us. Not to mention an Omen-like 4-year-old boy who whacks Yustman with a mirror, gets hit by a car and survives unscathed and at one point stabs a character in the stomach with a really big knife.

Yustman (Cloverfield) sure looks great in her underwear, but otherwise she stares blankly at people and laptop computers, runs around looking distressed and, as evidenced by a scene that serves as a warning against peeping through holes in bathroom stalls, screams like nobody’s business. She also smashes mirrors and sees freaky things on the dance floor in a nightclub.

The film’s only real color comes from Jane Alexander as an Auschwitz survivor who has a connection to Yustman and Yustman’s dead mother (Carla Gugino). Her performance is a little exaggerated, sure, but since she’s the one who gets to elaborate to the vacant-eyed co-ed on what exactly is happening, I don’t necessarily mind hearing the explanation in a colorful Jewish accent.

And she’s certainly used better than Oldman, who pronounces idea as “idee-er” and yells at a dog with an upside-down head to scat. What possessed him to sign up for such nonsense I’ll never know. Maybe it was the chance to blow on a shofar and conduct a Jewish exorcism, the kind that causes lots of wind, sparking lights, and a woman to literally get bent. Or maybe it was just the paycheck. - [DVD]

Horror/Thriller

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 7/7/09