Harefooted Halloween: The Unborn

What I Liked: Brooke Adams (Days of Heaven, The Dead Zone) goes all out with her performance.  As she learns the truth behind her pregnancy she gets more and more distraught and eventually completely flips her shit.  There’s a great part where she’s alone in her house and noises like the phone ringing and the car alarm drive her crazy so she tosses a brick through the car window and rips the wires out.  Then she goes looking for her cat’s toy and turns the house upside down trashing everything in sight.  When her visiting mother walks through the door she very calmly explains “Everything’s ok, I was just looking for something…”.  This snap to the opposite pole is funny but also effective.  Adams carries the movie with her dedication to the role of a mother to be starting off normal and descending into madness.

The film exploits fear for your child’s health and uncertainty about motherhood fairly well.  These are ancient sentiments that are innate in everyone so the themes work.  To go through the process of having a child you need to put your faith into the hands of experts, especially if you’ve been unsuccessful in that effort for a long time.  So when you start to think that trust has been betrayed it’s devastating.  As I get older I have to admit storylines like these hit harder for me.

Gary Numan did the score and it’s a pretty cool use of moody synths and drum machine.  Strangely at times it sounds more like an action movie soundtrack from the time period and unfortunately also has a weaker B movie vibe here and there.  But when it’s in the pocket it creates a nice ominous atmosphere.

What I Didn’t Like: The production has a cheaper feel in general.  They sprang for some effects towards the end and went for a neat looking hard car crash but other than that it’s mainly a pregnant woman losing her mind and uncovering a mystery from the confines of her house and doctor’s office.

Speaking of the effects they employ an animatronic/puppet baby for the finale and it doesn’t look so hot.  This is just a matter of they didn’t have the budget to pull off a convincing looking evil baby but still, the shit they make this guy do is comical.  I don’t want to say any more so you’ll be surprised in case you throw this one on.

Overall Impressions: This is an ok sort of Rosemary’s Baby knock off.  If it weren’t for Brooke Adams’ passionate performance this would be very tedious to sit through.  There are some parts that are unintentionally humorous, especially towards the end, that push this firmly into fun territory.  But there are also a few scenes that are genuinely creepy.  For example there’s an extremely disturbing part where another woman also thinks there’s something wrong with her baby and she stabs herself in her very pregnant belly with a knife in an attempt to kill it.  I mean my jaw fell to the floor when I saw they went for that full on.  Plus there’s a horrific abortion scene.

So you’ll get a mix of quality with this film.  Sometimes it’s actually pieced together well, other times it’s pretty damn schlocky and still other times there’s real deal unsettling shit.