THE UNBORN is one of the first new releases of 2009 and I strongly suspect by the end of the year it will already be completely forgotten about. I saw it less than 24 hours ago and I've already forgotten most of it. My best assessment would be to say this motion picture is stillborn.

Leave it to Platinum Dunes to finally produce a horror movie that is not a remake and still manage to make a film that you'd swear was yet another mediocre remake of a superior Asian horror film. It’s an entirely original film that just happens to have been stitched together from concepts and visuals lifted straight from the modern J-horror playbook.

For all his success as a writer/producer of comic book movies, it's becoming more and more evident that unless he's working under the supervision of a more deft filmmaker, David Goyer left to his own devices is a recipe for disappointment: BLADE: TRINITY, last year's unseen stinker THE INVISIBLE, and now THE UNBORN. His latest is 80-minutes of lackluster retreading enhanced only by a few inspired visuals, not the least of which is star Odette Yustman running around on several occasions in only a flimsy top and her panties - as a guy I found that inspiring.

Odette Yustman, who you may remember as the CLOVERFIELD love interest in need of rescuing, stars as Casey, the comely 18-year old heroine of this J-horror movie - this time the "J" stands for Jewish. I once suggested when writing about an Asylum OMEN mockbuster that maybe someone should try making such a film built around a different religion for a change rather than the usual Catholic/Christian doctrine. On this front Goyer deserves credit; the mystical Jewish religion of Kabbalah is the basis for much of this film's religious ballyhoo even if he doesn't do nearly enough with it. At least Madonna should be inclined to give THE UNBORN a rave review.

Casey begins experiencing strange hallucinations and weird nightmares. When a ghostly Eddie Munster kid isn't haunting her she's stalked by the next door neighbor's kid possessed by the ghost. A mysterious film strip is given to her. One of her eyes begins changing color. She discovers she had a twin brother that died in the womb. She discovers she's Jewish. Her eye color changing appeared to affect her more personally than the discovery of the last two.

I got the sense watching that Yustman is being groomed to be our next Jessica Alba. By that I mean a stunningly beautiful young woman who shows enough skin to titillate without going all the way but still isn't a strong enough actress to carry a film on her own. Or maybe a better analogy would be to describe her as a less skanky Megan Fox.

Cam Gigandet finally gets to graduate from tweener movie villain in NEVER BACK DOWN and TWILIGHT to tweener movie love interest as Casey's empty vessel of a boyfriend. Meagan Goode continues her trend of appearing in horror movies as a doomed best friend of the lead. I'll just assume Goyer called in some favors to get Carlo Gugino to appear in flashbacks as Casey's equally haunted mom and Gary Oldman as the Rabbi who tag teams with a buff African-American Episcopalian priest for the climactic exorcism smackdown.

The source of Casey's torment is a dybbuk, a body-jumping, mirror-haunting demon of Jewish religion that desperately wants to be born into our world. The manifestation of this dybbuk also has ties to the Nazi's diabolical experiments on Jewish twins performed in the death camps. Could there be a more unfortunate piece of screenwriting than having a Holocaust survivor tell Casey," You need to finish what was started at Auschwitz." Oy vey, Mr. Goyer. Oy vey.

Goyer can be counted on to downplay any intriguing ideas he introduces in favor of the standard pointless dream sequences, cheap jump scares (one of which truly worked), and scenes that shamelessly mimic movies from THE GRUDGE to THE EXORCIST. He shows little interest in having the characters deal with the religious aspects aside from using it as an explanation for what's happening. We're treated to a few creepy visuals along the way - almost all of which are given away in the trailer - but none of it can overcome Goyer's script that is as convoluted as it is cliché, or his lackluster direction either. We're talking about a horror movie that ends with an exorcism that devolves into a foot chase and the two leads physically fighting for their lives against Father Kimbo Slice.

Then there's the twist ending that is not only extremely predictable, it still manages to feel tacked on as a last second afterthought. Given the nature of this twist ending I couldn't help but wonder why this evil spirit was bothering to cause all this trouble in the first place; seemed to me making its presence known only caused more trouble for itself.

Useless Trivia: THE UNBORN is the first of three horror movies opening this January beginning with "un". The other two being UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS and THE UNINVITED.