The Unborn


Oh look, they released it on Laser Disc, so you know it’s fancy.

Virginia and Brad Marshall are desperate to have a child, but for years have been suffering nothing but bad luck. So some of Brad’s coworkers refer the couple to Dr. Richard Meyerling, a doctor who has had almost a 100% success rate with helping struggling couples conceive. Sure enough, one quick procedure later and Virginia excitedly finds herself to be an expectant mother-to-be. But her joy is short-lived as strange things slowly begin to start happening to her. It starts out inconsequentially enough with a simple, yet concerning rash, but as the oddities start piling up and other mothers-to-be from the same clinic start experiencing similarly concerning episodes, Virginia begins to suspect that there is not only something very wrong with her baby, but also with the doctor who helped create it.


But I just look so trustworthy!

As I was scrolling through my extensively long and ever growing watch-list trying to find something to catch my fancy (so to speak), I noticed I seemed to have an abundance of “creepy/evil children” films in my queue. So I figured that would be a good impromptu theme for the month. And what better way to start said theme, than with a film that starts the evil off at the earliest possible opportunity: before the evil little buggers are even born. Thus, we have The Unborn, an aptly titled little budget film that focuses on the fears associated with pregnancy. It’s a film that’s decidedly better than the sum of its parts (and it’s oddly low IMDB rating), but sadly kinda starts to fall apart towards the end, despite a solid premise and a rather auspicious start. But I suppose that shouldn’t really be that big of a surprise when it comes to any movie produced by Roger Corman.


Pictured: How a lot of women end up looking after watching a Corman movie.

The film’s horror comes in two parts. The first involves the “body horror” aspect, as Virginia slowly realizes that not only is her body violently rejecting her pregnancy, but that the baby inside her is unnatural and likely trying to consume her from the inside out. These revelations start off slowly with things like the aforementioned rash, followed by violent mood swings, which may not be too out of the ordinary for pregnancies…at least until she starts spacing out and the hallucinations start. But it isn’t until she’s drawing something and the baby starts mimicking her movements that she realizes that something is really, really wrong, and she begins to get super concerned enough to do some digging.


Well, gee, now I’m traumatized for life. Thanks, movie.

Which brings us into the second aspect of the film’s horror, that being Virginia’s complete loss of choice and self autonomy. And again, it starts out with standard pregnancy concerns, like no smoking, no drinking, no changing the cat’s litter box (Toxoplasmosis parasites, ick). But then it slowly devolves as she begins to realize what the doctor did, and who knew about it, and how even though she wanted this pregnancy to happen, she was being used and she really didn’t have a say in what was happening to her from the moment she stepped into the doctor’s office. It’s all very disturbing but also ties into the film’s not-so-subtle undercurrent of misogyny (thanks Roger Corman), which begins with the men closest to her making decisions for her against her will, and also includes some members of society treating her like a friggin’ child (a police officer literally brings Virginia home one night and tells her mother that she shouldn’t be out in “her condition,” as if she can’t go out for a bloody walk at night just because of a baby bump.) And Virginia realizes all this fairly early on (“I’m tired of being treated like nothing more than an incubator!”), so part of her story arc involves counteracting that and re-gaining her ability to make her own decisions again. So while it’s all very creepy, it is kinda nice to see a lady in a horror movie like this try to take charge and regain control of her life (at least until it falls apart at the end), which isn’t something that typically happens in movies like this.


No jury in the world would convict you if you shot him, lady. Just sayin’…

The downside to all of this nice, and (surprisingly subtle, considering this is a Corman movie) horror build-up is that the film gets too… ambitious, I guess, and falls apart by the end. Where the first two-thirds of the movie are really strong and do a decent job of building up the horror and the dread and the possible “is this really happening or is Virginia just crazy” psychological angle, again, you have to remember that Roger Corman had his grubby little hands on this movie, so naturally something ridiculous has to happen. In this case — and I apologize in advance for the spoilers — it involves the “super” fetus being “born” prematurely and then having it go on a tiny little killing spree. Yup, that’s the direction this movie ultimately decided to go in. And you know what, it almost could have worked. Except this is a movie on the cheaper end of cheap-ass movies, so the “fetus” in question is little more than a skinny, fleshy-looking hand puppet that looks like it’d fall and crack it’s misshapen skull open if it ever tried to stand on its own, yet they want us to think it can take out a grown-ass adult? SNORT That ain’t happening. As soon as you see it it’ll immediately take you right out of the movie and slaughter any and all good will it had built up to that point. It’s just that hokey, and I’m really disappointed, because the movie had such a decent start, and they just went and squandered it. It’s… It’s just so sad.


Ahahahaha!

And thus The Unborn ultimately ends up being borked by its underwhelming and ludicrous ending. Which is kinda frustrating, because it does start off rather promising. But instead the filmmakers decided to “go there” and as a result ended up turning what could have been a decent, low-budget psychological horror into something laughable. Meaning instead of horror the biggest draw of their film ends up being a very early appearance of Lisa Kudrow, and maybe watching Kathy Griffin get beaten to death by a hammer (which I’m sure some people out there will appreciate). Oh well. At least they tried… I guess. Then again, since the movie’s final takeaway seems to be that “the Human Genome” project is evil (was that really a concern in the early 90s?), maybe it didn’t have much of a prayer to begin with. But hey, it does have decent acting and production values, so I can’t say it’s all bad. I mean, at least it’s (mostly) watchable. So if you like decently acted, yet very cheap, Rosemary’s Baby clones that end with red-skinned, bug-eyed, premature fetuses sitting on rocks and screeching into an early morning sunrise, then The Unborn could be the right film for you. But if you’re looking for a movie with an ending that isn’t going to risk making you laugh hysterically and shake your head, then you might want to look elsewhere.

The Unborn is available on a variety of streaming services.

The Unborn is also available on DVD and Bluray.

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