THE UNBORN

She wakes up in a hospital after being beaten by a dealer and discovers she is twelve weeks pregnant. From that moment, the girl begins to be the victim of strange hallucinations and receives a visit from a disturbing pregnant woman who seems to be claiming her baby. Por, helped by a young social worker, begins to investigate the woman's identity and realizes that she is a girl who died three years earlier. Seeing a film like "The Unborn" arrive in Italy today is surprising. This is a Thai production from 2003, that is, from the period when Asia was still exploring the post- "The Ring" territory (which still happens today, even if the "fad" seems to have been scaled down), and naturally we are dealing with a story of oriental ghosts of those that seem made with a mold. Choosing to distribute a film that is already a late product with a five-year delay does not seem like a wholly accurate strategy, and if we add that "The Unborn" is a bad film regardless of originality and the time it arrives on the market, we have an excellent reason to leave the DVD on the video store shelf. The director and screenwriter Bhandit Thongdee ("The Mercury Man") attempts to give a narrative personality touch to the story, focusing mainly on the main character who appears very different compared to the countless ghost story protagonists, usually normal people who lead a regulated life and suddenly thrown into the irrational. In "The Unborn", Por, played by a relatively convincing Intira Jaroenpura, is a drug addict with a strong character and aggressive look, who initially appears to be a real novelty for the genre. As the minutes pass, however, Por also conforms to the large mass of frightened scream girls from Asian ghost movies and, if not for the masculine cut, would not be too different from the protagonist of any "The Grudge". And so on with appearances of female ghosts in white dresses and long raven hair that scare the unfortunate woman of the turn in an attempt to contact her to find a form of revenge. A worsening factor for "The Unborn" is the total lack of tension, given by a "unprofessional" scene construction and unable to exploit the effect devoted to hypodermic unease that the eastern horror cinema has often known how to give us. Every appearance with sure potential resolves with a failure, starting with the bathtub scene, which if constructed differently could have generated some chills. "The Unborn" proceeds with autopilot perfectly retracing the Nakatian canvas of the spirit seeking "Attention", up to its false liberation. In this case, however, the predictable story turns into an equally predictable "American" thriller on the final lines, which perhaps wants to surprise the viewer but only results in being cloying and also out of place. It seems, in fact, that at a certain point the feature film by Thongdee has two different films within it, the supernatural horror and the police thriller, which however do not fit well, creating confusion and showing evident screenplay holes. The staging turns out to be rather squalid, making "The Unborn" appear as a film that is not very "cinematographic" and more suitable for direct-to-video distribution. In short, useless, poorly made and therefore avoidable. "The Unborn" is also the original title of a mini-saga (2 films) from the early '90s started by Rodman Flender, of which the first film also arrived in Italy with the title "Horror Baby". While upcoming for release, directed by David Goyer, there is a horror film with the same title that, contrary to what one might expect, is not a remake of the Thai film.