Oy Vey

I would like, if I may, take you on a strange journey.

HOW STRANGE? you shout with your water pistols aimed.

Strange enough that back when George Bush was still in office, I watched the trailer for The Unborn in a crowded Friday night movie theater and said to my ticket buddy, “Am I crazy, or does that look kind of good?”

Ahhhh, the folly of youth! I knew then that what I was seeing in a 2 minute, heavily edited preview was by far the best moments this Platinum Dunes film had to offer. Still, I was mildly intrigued to the point that a year and library card swipe later, The Unborn somehow ended up in my DVD player. 


I suppose we've learned that sometimes, the library is not necessarily our friend.

Quick Plot: Meet Casey (Odette Yustman), a rich young college student who should really eat more. Such a chore is difficult, however, when upon cracking some cholesterol-loaded eggs, strange thorax-heavy potato bugs spring free. 

Couple this with an earlier dream involving a mask-wearing dog, buried bottled fetus, and blue-eyed child dressed in Holocaust duds and you’ve got a fragile woman in typical stalked-by-dybbuks mode.

Turns out, Casey was formerly a twin who unceremoniously strangled her brother in the womb with her umbilical cord. Badass, right? Not really, since all Yustman can do throughout the film is look sad and/or cute in underwear. You would think a character with a parents played by the utterly awesome James Remar and Carla Gugino would at least have some spark of personality, but that’s asking an awful lot from a movie too busy drenching itself in blue, musical cues carefully timed for jump scares (and thusly negating said jump scare), and lazily researched Jewish mythology.

See, Casey is being haunted/stalked by a dybbuk, an evil entity described in Hebrew lore as a wandering soul that attaches itself to humans. For Casey, this in an inherited problem akin to baldness, something grandmother and mother faced with varying results (Grandma kicked its ass in a concentration camp; Mama hung herself in failure).  The side effects are varied: yes, it seems to be driving those around her insane and homicidal (poor babysitting charge and sassy friend that hates old people) but it also means that Casey gets to sport snappy blue contacts and use an oversized bathroom at a busy club all by herself! When does that ever happen?!

The bathroom scene is important to note because it pretty much encompasses the limitations of The Unborn in 3 minutes. As Casey embraces a sparkling stainless steel toilet to vomit away (hmmmm...I wonder what THAT can mean), an icky mixture of brown fluid and insects starts to take over the ladies room. The lighting goes all strobe, the music gets intense, and poor pretty Casey screams. For a brief moment, it’s actually effective and then we realize--well before it happens--that the scene is bound to end with her bland boyfriend opening the door to the lights back on, floors cleaner than Joan Crawford’s tile, and Casey crunched in the corner wondering where all the CGI went. 

And that’s The Unborn in a nutshell, a film with some intriguing imagery and ambitious story ideas squished into a modern formula of J-horror makeovers with watered down American soda. I didn’t mention Gary Oldman, who enters late in the tale to exhaustively play a rabbi with a lot of free time on his hands. I should give a quick shout-out to Stringer Bell (yes I know his name is Idris Elba and no, I will still never refer to him, nor any actor formerly of The Wire, as anything but their Baltimore name) playing a kind, if irresponsible priest. I was happy to see C.S. Lee (Remar’s Dexter costar) as an optometrist. I like that the dybbuk’s name “Jumby” summoned all sorts of imagination in me picturing Pee-Wee’s pal Jambi trying to reborn in Yustman’s womb. That made me happy enough.

Yup. That’s about it.

High Points

Thought it doesn’t give us any context and therefore ultimately falls flat, the opening dream sequence is rather promising in its use of surreal imagery

Low Points

Yes, men and women of particular persuasions will find something to admire in Yustman’s model look, but the rest of us search fruitlessly for any iota of reason to actually care about what happens to her. It’s not so much the acting as it is the fact that the character has no defining characteristics to make her likable or existent

Lessons Learned

Stroke victims are surprisingly spry when possessed by Jewish demons

Windchimes chiming are a sign that a dubbuk is near. They're also a sign that it’s windy

While this has nothing to do with any plot point and ultimately has no consequence, I still think it’s a bad idea to go to sleep with your expensive Mac book at the foot of your bed

The best way to unite all faiths and end religious war is to hold an exorcism

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh. As hard as I’m being on The Unborn, it was at least a mildly original entry into the “The U-” craze of horror earlier this year. There are some vaguely interesting visuals at work, but this is still a rather dull barely-there footprint in theatrical American horror. Catch it on cable or with a few good drinks. In the right altered state, I can see the sight of one of this era’s best actor wearing a yarmulke and blowing into a sparkly Vegas-style religious didgeridoo being a much better time.

Someone Famous Presents Something Less Famous

“From the special effects masters behind Hellraiser and Hellbound” reads the tagline for the strategically titled 1989 horror film Hellgate. Aside from the titular first four letters, Hellgate would never, under any circumstances in this or any other dimension, be confused with Clive Barker’s visionary nightmare soon to not be remade by Pascal Laugier. Hellraiser and its first and best sequel Hellbound utilize innovative costume design, gooey yet restrained makeup, and grandly horrific sets that put the cheap puppetry and Disneyesque ghost town of Hellgate to shame. 

I didn’t rent Hellgate for its pedigree (my real motive was the fact that it was on a double DVD with The Pit, a surprisingly lesser film that featured an evil teddy bear and forest trolls) but I did end up quite happy with the Scooby Doo feel and spontaneously combusting sea creatures it featured. That being said, the desperate ad line for Hellgate got me thinking of how some films--particularly horror--are buttered up for prospective audiences using a randomly hot industry name that may have stopped by the set one day to snag a Kraft Service donut. The most recent examples to my knowledge:

Craven Something Better

Wes Craven is something of the Krusty the Klown of the horror industry: a fine entertainer in his own right, but a little loose when it comes to lending out his name. For these reasons, the man owes me $11.50. Yes, I was one of those six people that attended the opening of Wes Craven Presents Dracula 2000, a limping update of Bram Stoker’s classic starring a pre-300, pre-personality Gerard Butler. This is only slightly less offensive than the $4 I lost renting They. Don’t bother looking for it and getting confused by its similar title to the classic giant ant movie and recent terrifying French thriller. This bland little film came and went in 2002 with less impression than leading man Marc Blucas ever made as Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s most despised love interest Riley. Yes, Wes Craven presented another opportunity for Marc Blucas to dig deep into his soul for some serious lip biting emoting. The horror is there, just not the way you expect it.

It’s Good to Be King

Stephen King has been associated with quite a large pile of...less than stellar film reels, but even he has his limits when it comes to using putting his name on unsanctioned adaptations. While he takes full credit for gleefully bad missteps like (he even cameo’d in Thinner, King tightened down on quality control in the early 90s. Thus poor Jeff Fahey’s starring role as a landscaping savant in 1992’s The Lawnmower Man may have lost a bit of its prospective audience when Maine’s most prominent author sued the producers for associating the film with his original short story. One year later, the country’s most ubiquitous horror writer’s name was nowhere to be found on Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice, the not that terrible sequel to one of his most popular pieces-turned-feature. A good deal of the King film canon may not be good, but at least we generally know it came with his lawyer stamped approval.

The Unborn of Whom?

The trailer for this early 2009 release (the third Un -titled film of the month) was fairly promising until Michael Bay’s name made its bow. I suppose there were a few hungry Transformers fans lured to theaters by the Pavlovian connection, but did The Most Hated Man By Critics In America really have that much say in the making of this film? At least “The writer of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight” directed (although David Goyer does get a mere story credit for the more popular sequel). Having not yet seen The Unborn, I’m not qualified to say whether either marketing ploy is accurate. It was, however, extremely timely and convenient. 

Trust In the Toro

Guillermo Del Toro is a man whose name most genre fans trust, and thankfully, he wields his power well. A few years back, you may have found yourself explaining to a less cinematic friend that the new creepy looking Spanish film about kids in sack masks was not actually directed by that cuddly hobbit-to-be who made such an impression with Pan’s Labyrinth. The Orphanage is one of the better--almost best--horror films of the last ten years and shares a lot of the spirit found Del Toro’s masterful The Devil’s Backbone. It is, however, directed by a lesser known, but very talented Juan Antonio Bayona...whose name generally appears nowhere on the cover art. Still, Del Toro’s producing credit--milked for all its gooey attraction--is at least fitting and probably helped to make this little import a box office success. 

These are just a few forced to natural marketing connections of recent years. I imagine the list is unending, so please share you own discoveries and disappointments in the misadvertising of genre film. And by the way: unless my skimming and scanning skills are failing me, I can't seem to find a single connection on IMDB between Hellgate and its much more prominent near namesake. 

Friday the 13th, the Twelfth

The Best Drinking Game For Staying Sober:


Directions: Buy a bootleg DVD of Platinum Dunes latest foray into raping your childhood and impregnating it with false memories that alter past films into pieces of art. Next, crack open the first type of beer you ever drank while watching a decent horror film. What, it’s only 9 in the morning, you say? Don’t worry. This is one game that will keep you singing the alphabet backwards with only a few mistakes. In other words, you will probably pass a sobriety test with flying colors.


Turn movie on. Ready? Here comes the hard part:


Take a sip whenever...


The lighting is bright enough to show you anything at night

You can see Jason in full view for longer than two seconds of screen time


A female blonde is fully clothed


You say to yourself, “this will be awesome!” (i.e., because there’s a rusty and ready wood chipper an inch from a character’s head) and it actually is


A character you like dies

A character you like lives


A character you like exists onscreen

There is the slightest acknowledgement that the setting is a summer camp


Anything about Jason’s sudden urge to kill after 29 years of laying low, installing flood lights, and practicing archery is explained

I don’t know about you, but I’m incredibly thirsty.


As I’ve said before, I wasn’t expecting a franchise that has previously churned out imitation I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter quality installments to be brilliant, but how hard was it to construct a mildly interesting, perhaps even slightly scary film? Too hard, okay. How about a cheeky horror romp that pays some form of homage to the eleven films that came before? No? Here’s an idea: just give me one death scene that I’ll remember two hours later. Fine. I’ll make it easy: release a remake of higher quality than the disgrace that was 2006’s The Hitcher. Seriously, EVEN THAT wasn’t possible?

Did I just say what I think I said? Did I call The Hitcher 2006 a better movie than something else made by human beings? With hands? And presumably at least a few brain cells? Remind me to pack an extra sweater on my way to hell.


I wouldn’t be so offended by the mediocrity of F13.12 if it hadn’t made $42 million and counting this weekend. Yay, horror fans actually paid for something! Well I hope we enjoyed it because we can probably now expect another 11 sequels over the next decade. Hey, there are two more 13ths in 2009 that land on Friday, so perhaps Michael Bay will go kidnap a few more CW refugees to get the right timing. It’s not like he needs to wait for a script or anything. Say what you will about the Saw series: I’ll take Tobin Bell’s hoarse whisper and the writers’ mild dedication towards providing plot and character intricacies over badly lit death scenes of obnoxiously bland catalogue models any day.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go have a drink and formulate a plan to destroy Platinum Dunes before Jared Padalecki signs on to play Freddy Krueger and the script is rewritten so he doesn’t hunt in dreams, but just starts hanging out in the dressing room of Victoria’s Secret until his bloodless defeat by Paul Blart, Mall Cop. Crap. Did I just give Michael Bay a bad yet inexplicably lucrative pitch?