The Unborn Trailer (2009)

Sometimes the soul of a dead person has been so tainted with evil that it is denied entrance to heaven. It must endlessly wander the borderlands between worlds, desperately searching for a new body to inhabit.

And sometimes it actually succeeds.

Writer/director David Goyer (Blade: Trinity, The Invisible, Batman Begins) gives a terrifying glimpse into the life of the undead in The Unborn, a supernatural thriller that follows a young woman pulled into a world of nightmares when a demonic spirit haunts her and threatens everyone she loves.

Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) hated her mother for leaving her as a child. But when inexplicable things start to happen, Casey begins to understand why she left. Plagued by merciless dreams and a tortured ghost that haunts her waking hours, she must turn to the only spiritual advisor, Sendak (Gary Oldman), who can make it stop.

With Sendak’s help, Casey uncovers the source of a family curse dating back to Nazi Germany—a creature with the ability to inhabit anyone or anything that is getting stronger with each possession. With the curse unleashed, her only chance at survival is to shut a doorway from beyond our world that has been pried open by someone who was never born.

The Unborn is the first film of Michael Bay’s Platinum Dune production company to be rated PG-13. The company was created in 2001 and specialized in the horror genre, with special attention on remakes.

The company was also responsible for the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), The Amityville Horror and The Hitcher to name a few. As with most horror films, The Unborn was made for a modest amount of money. The budget was $16 million and earned over $42 million domestically.

As if twins weren’t terrifying enough, we get the film The Unborn. The trailer starts out with what seems like a typical horror film about a babysitter in a house, dark of course because in horror movies everyone is an energy saver. The babysitter (Odette Yustman) goes to check on the children, one of those children says something creepy about someone wanting to be born and we think, “Oh, great this creepy kid sees the dead and is going wreak havoc on the poor babysitter”, Nope!

For some reason, the trailer veers from that whole idea and suddenly the young woman is not just a babysitter but someone who once had a twin who died in utero and is pissed. Why the twin has waited until his sister is old enough to be hot in a tank top is surely an oversight on his part. Some guy says the twin is furious that his sister is living her life and he is stuck being dead this whole time, hence his anger issues. Since the only thing to do with menacing demon siblings is to exorcise them out of your eye, that is just what they will have to do.

The trailer for The Unborn is freaky, to say the least, there are plenty of terrifying images and off-putting music that jolted me. The lead, Odette Yustman is a familiar face but not famous enough to presuppose anything in particular about the character she is playing, but definitely ideal for the ubiquitous beautiful girl in a horror film. The film itself may benefit from fleshed- out story and even more scares, but I am not banking on it.