Universal Studios | Buy at Amazon | Review by Crites
This may be yet another take-off on Seventies devil child films such as THE OMEN and THE EXORCIST, albeit with a bit of a dreidel spin, but the promise of teenage panty outweighs the overused visual of the backwards head. Plus, it's got potato bugs in it. And that's a huge bonus - when was the last time you saw a potato bug as a harbinger of evil?
Casey (aspiring Jennifer Connelly Odette Yustman) is troubled before the film barely begins; she dreams of lost mittens, dogs with human facemasks, and sentient embryos. (What's the name of this film again? Oh yeah, THE UNBORN.) She also has the unfortunate duty of babysitting creepy little shit Matty (Atticus Shaffer), who clocks her in the face with a mirror and an unsettling message when she catches him pulling some weird voodoo shit on his baby sister.
The next morning as she prepares breakfast Casey cracks open an egg and is horrified when a live potato bug falls out into the skillet. Her day isn't much improved when, sitting around with her college pals, she's told by her superstitious friend Romy (Meagan Good) that it's bad luck for a newborn to see its own reflection – which is exactly what Matty was doing to his sister when Casey found him the night before. And wouldn't you know it, shortly thereafter Matty's little sister dies unexpectedly.
Matty's eerie message to Casey, "Jumby wants to be born now," comes creeping back to her again and again, accompanied by piercing headaches and other unexplained symptoms. And then, right in the middle of a class, the potato bug strikes again! Cut to a shower scene (even in the unrated version it's a PG-13 shower scene; no T, no A), and in the locker room afterwards Romy draws Casey's attention to the fact that she's suddenly acquired David Bowie syndrome: one of her irises is changing color from brown to blue. On top of that, Casey keeps seeing another creepy little shit playing hide-and-seek mindgames in her line of vision.
After an eye exam Casey is told that there is nothing wrong with her eyes (although if she still has concerns her physician urges her to seek the opinion of a "genetic counselor"), but the doctor does ask her an unusual question: is Casey a twin? She doesn't think so, but she goes to ask her father (James Remar) anyway. And if you've seen the trailers you already know what the answer is. What hasn't been explained is that her twin brother died in the womb because her umbilical cord became wrapped around his throat. Dad says they didn't have names for the kids yet, at such an early age, but they did have nicknames. And the boy's was Jumby.
Earlier Casey had disclosed to her boyfriend Mark that her mother Janet (Carla Gugino, barely recognizable in a non-sexy role) was an inmate of a mental asylum, and that she had committed suicide there. Now looking for some kind of connection, Casey goes through some of her mother's remaining effects. Among these is an article on Holocaust survivor Sofi Kozma, along with a ghostly photograph of Janet that also appears to show the face of the child that Casey has been haunted by recently.
Dragging Romy along for support Casey pays a visit to Eldon Estates, the nursing home where Sofi resides. Right away Sofi marks Casey for a twin, but says that she doesn't know her mother Janet. However when she sees the photograph of Casey's mother, with the boy's face staring out at her, she becomes nearly apoplectic and orders her visitors to leave.
Along with the troubling photograph Casey also unearthed some 8mm film reels. Getting Mark to set these up for her the two then take a virtual tour of the madhouse in which Janet died, ending in the whitewashed brick room in which she hung herself. In an attempt to counter these unsettling images Casey goes out dancing with her friends, but she fails to notice the underground nature of the club they've chosen: Club Potato Bug! After an attack of hallucinations and headache Casey retreats to one of the restroom stalls to vomit, only to have one of the toilets back up and overflow with muck and live insects. All of this even as the walls begin to shatter and the tentacles of some Cthulhuian menace spray forth toward her. As she screams for help Casey's dead mother comes shambling out of another stall toward her, and... when her friends respond to her cries there's neither a ghost nor a potato bug in sight.
Now Casey's in a real pickle; either she's being deliberately haunted, or she's just plain fucking nuts. The dream she has where she's plastered to the ceiling above her sleeping body, watching the ghost boy claw into her uterus, doesn't really help in any case. Waking up from this nightmare in a fright, Casey is just in time to receive a phonecall from Sofi, who says that she needs to see the girl right away. Sofi did know Casey's mother after all: Janet was her daughter.
Casey returns to the nursing home, where Sofi explains that the boy in the photograph with Janet is her own twin brother, Barto. Barto died at Auschwitz in 1944, under the experimentation of "The Doctor," a man who believed that twins held the key to human genetics. "They conducted experiments on us," Sofi explains, "Horrible experiments that blurred the line between science and the occult." Many of these experiments involved painful artificial adjustments of eye color, which eventually resulted in Barto's death. But, like a victim of some Nazi pet sematary, Barto came back. "Except it wasn't really Barto. A doorway had been opened. Something else was inhabiting his body."
It was a dybbuk, says Sofi, "The soul of a dead person that has been barred from entering heaven." Thus cursed it wanders the earth looking for a new body; especially those of twins, who are in a sense their own special type of mirror. "And mirrors have always been doorways to the other world." As for Barto's dybbuk, Sofi killed it. And, "It's been trying to find its way back ever since." According to Sofi the dybbuk wanted Jumby, but when he died the creature's attentions turned to Casey. And it's been stalking her ever since she was born, just as it haunted her mother to death.
All of this is more alarming than helpful, but Sofi does point Casey in the direction of The Book of Mirrors and gives her the name of Rabbi Josef Sendak, both of which may prove useful in evading the curse. Visiting the university library Casey easily steals the rare Sefer ha-marot, which she finds is filled with the same nightmarish imagery that she's been experiencing. Taking the unusual book to Rabbi Sendak (Gary Oldman) for translation, Casey also requests an exorcism. Sendak attempts to assuage her drama, but upon her insistence he agrees to take a look at the book.
Meanwhile, following Sofi's instructions, Casey destroys all of the mirrors in her home. (Perhaps so that the dybbuk will have to stand in line between an angry father and decades of bad luck?) Shortly thereafter Romy has a death threat delivered to her by Matty, warning her against helping Casey fight the dybbuk's reentry into the world. Casey continues to have nightmares, and Sofi falls victim to demonic entities in the middle of the night.
Sendak, in the process of translating The Book of Mirrors, is also visited by the heebie-jeebies, including a dog with an upside-down face. That same night the dybbuk attempts to make good on its threat against Romy, sending pint-sized assassin Matty after her with a butcher's knife. Mark and Casey show up to prevent the murder, but a certain amount of damage has already been done.
Rabbi Sendak has by now reconsidered the exorcism idea, and with the assistance of an Episcopal priest he decides to go ahead and try this route. And what better place to hold the rites than the abandoned asylum...
As far as how successful the ceremony is, you'll have to see for yourself. Let's just say that at least it brings the movie that much closer to conclusion. And needless to say, the gates of Hell do not open to disgorge an elephant-sized potato bug. (Damn it!) There are a few more li'l 'uns however, along with a crash course in occult ritual, some Hebrew mysticism, Haunted Mansion theatrics, telekinetic chaos, demon possession, monsterism and the like. And after all of that you get a rather unfulfilling denouement stuffed with a cliche that's so unsurprising it's practically insulting.
And there you have it. Kind of a letdown, really, even though it encompasses all of the standard fundamentals of the supernatural thriller: hallucinations, disturbing revelations, things that should not be, dead relatives, possession, creepy animals and kids, etc. And then tries to throw the whole Goebbels/twin obsession concept in there as well. But even then elements such as the Nazis' experimentation with the occult are never fully fleshed out. And old Sofi never did explain exactly how she killed her brother's dybbuk, which might have saved a lot of time and effort for everyone involved.
Speaking of which, I really don't know how Sir Gary Oldman (looking a bit like a potato bug himself) got sucked into this one, as a rabbi, yet. But, it's a paycheck and a resume filler, even if he is sorely underused. No Sid Vicious or Mason Verger quality performance here I'm afraid.
The effects are hit and miss; the nightmarish dream sequences can be a little creepy (especially the Jaws figure, although it's none too different from the underwater thing in THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL remake), but not as disturbing as they could be. (There's a big emphasis on contact lenses.) Somehow visions such as the upside-down dog face manage to be more amusing than menacing; like Spuds McKenzie with a bad hangover. Drawn by Ralph Steadman. In fact, with the swamp-blue coloration and the emphasis on mirrors and vengeful spirits it's hard not to compare this to other American horror films crafted in imitation of the Japanese style.
Kudos to the potato bug wrangler though; unfortunately the fucking end credits on the widescreen DVD edition prevented me from being able to tell exactly who this was. At any rate, kudos to you sir or ma'am. Still, there aren't enough potato bugs in this salad for me.
Now watch it again and play The Potato Bug Drinking Game: take a drink each time a potato bug appears on screen. Careful, when you get to the club scene this is gonna fuck you up...
Bonus features consist of deleted scenes. Alas, no more potato bugs. And no explanation of the nickname; what the fuck is a Jumby, anyway?
Keep posted for THE UNBORN 2: RISE OF THE JERUSALEM CRICKETS.
