Odette Yustman Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Any movie that begins with a dog wearing a human mask is in serious trouble. If it wants to use that kind of dream snippet as a launch pad for exploring a demented and increasingly bizarre world, if it wants to embrace a loony aesthetic and milk it for all it's worth, wonderful. Deliver a solid, jolting, dazzling, surprising thriller, and all will be forgiven.

On the other hand, if it desperately wants to be taken seriously, if it proceeds in a very measured and sober manner, if it becomes increasingly sedate as it calmly plods through tedious exposition, then you have a mess on your hands.

The Unborn looks like a ghost story, feels like a ghost story, and kinda sounds like a ghost story, but it's dead on arrival. Because writer/director David S. Goyer has been associated with a host of projects with which I have a natural affinity, I was cautiously optimistic that his fourth directorial outing (after ZigZag, Blade: Trinity, and The Invisible) might reflect more of the pulpy, noirish mood and momentum that are evident in some of the best scripts for which he's been credited in part or in whole (Dark City, Blade II, Batman Begins).

Instead, all the juice has been drained from The Unborn. Not even the sight of the lovely, lean and fit Odette Yustman, whose last name became Yowza! when the trailer and pics first hit the net, can salvage the film from mediocrity.

This week will bring us The Unborn -- the latest horror movie offering starring Cloverfield's Odette Yustman, with a pretty sweet supporting cast that includes Gary Oldman, Cam Gigandet, Meagan Good, Carla Gugino, James Remar, Jane Alexander, and Idris Elba. But before it hits theaters on Friday, you can check out the clip above, courtesy of Empire. (You might recognize it as a longer scene from the trailer.)

Sometimes twins just aren't cool. They either ingest you in the womb, or die and then haunt you later. Yustman plays a girl who is bitter about the fact that her mom left her as a child -- only to later begin to discover why. She turns to a spiritual advisor (Oldman), and tries to end a family curse dating back to Nazi Germany ... at least, according to the Moviefone synopsis. The trailer is more -- "Hey, I have a twin brother who is dead and ticked off about it."

Is it her twin? Or just a demon disguised? No idea. But with Oldman along for the ride, it's got to be a sweet and scary journey.

A pal of mine passed along this new international poster for David S. Goyer's supernatural thriller, The Unborn, which Empire Magazine recently premiered. The Unborn stars Odette Yustman (Cloverfield), who finds herself haunted by one freaky little spirit if the freaky little trailer is to be believed.

In the most petty terms, I give this one the benefit of the doubt over next month's other PG-13 horror flick, The Uninvited. This one was rated PG-13 for "intense sequences of violence and terror, disturbing images, thematic material and language including some sexual references"; that one can only boast "violent and disturbing images, thematic material, sexual content, language and teen drinking". Try and tell me you wouldn't rather see the former based on that assessment alone.

Other than that, I really just wanted to share this nifty poster with you and yours this holiday season. Co-starring Gary Oldman, Cam Gigandet, and Odette Yustman's Sweet Booty (also of Cloverfield), The Unborn opens on January 9th.

If you were going to create a gallery of rogues, what actors and actresses would you include?

Personally, I'd throw some Christopher Walken in with some Lena Olin, Henry Rollins, Gary Oldman, perhaps some Lena Headey and Jackie Earle Haley ... just to name a few. But maybe I'm completely off because this is a different type of rogue. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Ving Rhames *, Ellen Barkin, Rob Corddry, Bob Odenkirk, Jeffrey Tambor, and Maggie Q have signed on for a new action comedy called Rogue's Gallery -- which already stars Joe Anderson, Odette Yustman, Adam Scott, and Emilie de Ravin.

Written by Brian Watanabe and Abe Levy, and directed by Fouad Mikati, the film focuses on "the battle that ensues among groups of government spy teams in an underground facility after their boss is assassinated." Are there that many spy teams? Do they then use their super spy skills to try and take the others down? The premise sounds like it could have promise.

The film is currently shooting in LA, but we can still dream of our own group of rogues. Who would make your list?

*Okay, he'd definitely make my rogue cut.

According to Jewish folklore (or at least according to a really scary story my rabbi once told me), a "dybbuk" is an angry, undead spirit that possesses a human being. So perhaps writer / director David S. Goyer pitched this concept to his new Plantium Dunes bosses as "Poltergeist meets The Exorcist, only Jewish." Seems unlikely he'd start the meeting with "Hey, anyone remember any ghost stories they once heard in Hebrew school?"

Either way, The Hollywood Reporter is (ahem) reporting that Goyer and three actors have signed on to an as-yet-untitled "supernatural thriller" about "a 19-year-old girl who is haunted by a dybbuk, the soul of a dead person barred from heaven, in the form of a young boy who perished in Auschwitz." (Glad to see the Holocaust can act as inspiration for a Platinum Dunes supernatural thriller.) The young lady will be played by Odette Yustman, who is currently wowing audiences as "that really hot girl who looks a little like Jennifer Connelly" in Cloverfield. Also on board is the always-busy Gary Oldman as a "spiritual specialist" and someone called Cam Gigandet as the hot girl's boyfriend.

Fingers crossed on this project. If there's anything lamer than a flat PG-13 thriller, it's probably a flat PG-13 thriller that invokes memories of Auschwitz. Still, after flicks like Dark City, Blade and Batman Begins, DSG has earned some benefit of the doubt by now. Production begins a few weeks from now in Chicago.

The first 'reality blockbuster' is a winner. Cloverfield is a lean, brisk roller-coaster of a monster movie, buoyed by the lack of story gimmicks and absurd characterizations that weigh down most movies of this ilk, no offense to you personally Mr. Broderick. In the aftermath, it will dawn on you that it's actually quite traditional -- every character has an arc -- but it doesn't feel that way. Nor does it feel like 'found footage', but something in between. Watch the prologue carefully, as our narrator/cameraman, whose point of view we'll share, is trying to make a standard going-away party commemoration tape interesting by sniffing out some sex gossip and self-consciously creating his own drama with a girl who wishes he'd get lost. This guy has filmmaking instincts, and when circumstances change and he becomes a 'character' in a disaster movie, he goes with it. He's not just pointing a camera -- he's making Cloverfield: The Movie. Ten years ago, we would have said 'it's not realistic that this guy would keep the camera rolling,' but those days are long gone.

Again, there's no pretense of reality here -- the 20-something party people who we meet and whose lives are flipped by the arrival of the monster are all as pretty and as vapid as anyone on Laguna Beach and they never become less glamorous as the movie goes on -- no one is caught in need of a snot-rag, ala Blair Witch. Among the main characters are Rob (Michael Stahl-David), the guest of honor at the party who is leaving for a new job in Japan, Beth (Odette Yustman) his ex-girlfriend who he still has feelings for but would only admit it if, say, her life were in mortal danger or something, and Marlena (Lizzy Caplan) whose quiet, wide-eyed demeanor and gruff sarcasm make her a bad candidate for 'Survivor Girl.' As the advertising will tell you, some characters will live and some will die but you never know when and where and one death is so shocking and inexplicable I wish very much that I hadn't already seen it a hundred times in the movie's 'give everything away' advertising.