the unborn Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Knowing
Forget Nostradamus. In this Nick Cage flick, a young girl in the '50s draws a picture of numbers for a time capsule. Fifty years later, when the contents are examined, it turns out that those numbers indicate the dates, death tolls, and coordinates of major disasters, and a few haven't happened yet! But it's not exactly the doomsday flick fans would hope for. In his review, Jeffrey M. Anderson says: "rather than becoming a comfortable hybrid between a small, smart movie and a big, dumb movie, Knowing became a horrible mutation, bulging out in all the wrong places, with unsightly scars where the butcher's knife had been." Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

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Push
Not every Dakota Fanning movie is a shocker of a drama. In this psychic espionage thriller, she plays a "watcher" and one of the psychic rogues determined to end a creepy government agency. (Also stars Chris Evans, Djimon Hounsou, and Camilla Belle.) For this feature, Anderson said: "Push is a better-than-average sci-fi thriller with genuine jolts and unexpected texture." Rent it. Also on Blu-ray.

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The Unborn
A girl is plagued with bad dreams, ghosts, and supernatural unpleasantness, so she hunts down a spiritual advisor in Gary Oldman to help. But that's not enough to help this film. Peter Martin wrote earlier this year: "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." Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

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Also out: Night Train, Border Town, Five Fingers, A Day in the Life, The Prodigy, Flying By, Dead Wood, Applause for Miss E, One Missed Final Call, Garrison, Rivers End, Scorched, See Dick Run

It's awesome, somehow, that Liam Neeson (along with some nifty marketing, it's true) can open an action movie to the tune of $24.6 million. Maybe it's the fact that Taken's debut at #1 comes after two depressing weeks when Paul Blart: Mall Cop inexplicably dominated the charts (and indeed, Paul Blart continues to rake in big bucks, falling off only 35% to second place). Taken opened in just about every other part of the world in 2008 and has already grossed nearly $70 million worldwide; put this one into the win column for Luc Besson and his production team.

The Uninvited's third-place, $10.5 million bow is a disappointment -- to Dreamworks, but also to me, since I think it's superior to most of the PG-13 horror that's been doing so well lately. (Certainly it kicks The Unborn's ass six ways from Sunday.) I think the advertising was a bit too stately, emphasizing Elizabeth Banks in creepy mode rather than the shock effects that tend to draw the crowds. Not a tragedy for the relatively inexpensive film, but perhaps a missed opportunity.

New in Town was defeated by a beatdown of scathing reviews, a wimpy, girly-man 1900-screen release, and a marketing effort that wasn't up to the task of capitalizing on Renee Zellweger's star power. Zellweger eats $6.75 million for breakfast.

For the first time since January 9th, Slumdog Millionare made less than it did the previous weekend, but it's up to a not-too-shabby $67 million cume. I wouldn't rule out $100 million before it leaves theaters.

The full top 10 after the jump.

Gran Torino's expansion into wide release, plus strong openings for The Unborn and Bride Wars, combined for a surprisingly robust early January weekend at the box office.

With Gran Torino, Warner Bros. appears to have pulled off a genuinely successful platform release -- which isn't easy (though perhaps somewhat easier when your movie is a populist crowdpleaser). The film crept along in limited release for four weeks before expanding to 2800 screens this weekend for a cool $29 million. Next week, Defiance will attempt a similar coup, and we'll see what happens; my guess is that it won't play nearly as well.

Bride Wars and The Unborn essentially tied for second place with around $21 million each. Both did well, which is not a huge shock; the obligatory January horror film tends to be easy money, and Bride Wars pretty much matched the precedent set by 27 Dresses last January. And Screen Gems found an audience for its African-American-led drama Not Easily Broken, which did an okay $5.6 million on just over 700 screens.

The first real post-holiday weekend was rough on the holdovers, which, with the exception of Slumdog Millionare, pretty uniformly took hits of 50% or more. Unsurprisingly, Marley & Me remains the biggest winner of the holiday season; it should top out around $140 million. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, meanwhile, is hoping to hold on for long enough to get a boost when the Oscar nominations come out.

The full top 10 after the jump.

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.

No, I'm not just recycling lists here. Since there were no new releases last week, this week's top five is the same as last week's, so that sense of deja vu you're experiencing is nothing to worry about.

1. Marley and Me: $24.2 million
2. Bedtime Stories: $20.5 million
3. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: $18.6 million
4. Valkyrie: $14 million
5. Yes Man: $13.9 million

We've got three new releases and two films going into wider release starting with:

Bride Wars
What's It All About: Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson star in this comedy about best friends who become bitter rivals when their weddings are scheduled for the same day.
Why It Might Do Well: We've got two highly charismatic leads and a cute premise that should appeal to women.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Men will run screaming from this one.
Number of Theaters: 3,000
Prediction: $21 million

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.

At this point, touting any horror movie as 'based on a true story' or 'inspired by true events' or however you phrase it serves to me as an indication that "we didn't think this was scary enough, but we want the gulliable teens to buy tickets" -- a marketing tactic which occasionally backfires (my younger brother knocked the plausibility of The Strangers on this count, but if they DIDN'T say it... would it have been a scarier film? How about a successful one?).

Regardless, The Haunting in Connecticut -- starring Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan and Elias Koteas -- appears to be following in those footsteps, with first a poster and then a trailer purporting that this tale of a family tormented in their new home with a mysterious past is at least fact-based(-ish). (Why, yes, you're correct in thinking that they already remade The Amityville Horror.)

Throw in a bunch of loud noises, and you've got yourself a probably PG-13 one-weekend wonder that was shot in 2007, but won't get dumped in theaters by Lionsgate (without press screenings, natch) until 2009. In fact, I'm willing to bet that it'll land somewhere between next Feburary (in the wake of other teen-targeting horror fare of The Unborn -- which actually looks creepy, if familiar -- and The Uninvited and My Bloody Valentine 3D and Friday the 13th) and maybe next April, before hitting DVD just in time for Halloween renters to settle for anything vaguely supernatural on the 'new release' wall.

Or, who knows, it could be good; if it takes proving me wrong to do that, I've eaten feet for less. (True story.)

All Hallow's Eve is approaching once again, and my favorite part of the holiday is all the corresponding movies that turn up on television and in theaters. October is already over a week old, so it's time to get into a Halloween frame of mind.

The Unborn
When I last saw Odette Yustman she was one of several New Yorkers fleeing for her life from a large beastie with nasty pointy teeth in Cloverfield. The Unborn has her facing a different kind of evil, specifically the spirit of her twin brother who died in the womb, or perhaps it's an evil entity that hoped to enter the world through him (it's a little hard to tell). There are some nightmarish visuals on display here, and the crawling thing with its head twisted around both sticks with me and makes me wonder if it's an homage to the spider walk scene in The Exorcist. The often cool Gary Oldman also stars and the film is written and directed by David S. Goyer, so I think there's something good and creepy here.

Just Buried
Not a horror flim this one, but rather an extremely dark comedy. Jay Baruchel (who I will always remember as the Led Zeppelin loving nerd from Almost Famous) plays a young man named Oliver who has inherited a funeral home troubled by a fierce competitor and a lack of business. The plucky young female mortician in his employ insists he can't shut down the funeral parlor and the two embark upon a path to drum up business and squash the competition by causing a few untimely deaths. Could be a nice slice of morbid fun here. Check out Scott's review of the film.

The Uninvited
A young woman returns home from a stint at a mental hospital following her mother's untimely death, to find that her father has a new girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks). There's also a ghost who is apparently trying to tell our former mental patient heroine that the girlfriend killed the last family she lived with. This is a much darker role than I'm used to seeing Banks play, and she seems to handle it well. This is a remake of a South Korean film called A Tale of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Hongryeon) which was once recommended to me but has languished in my Netflix queue for several years. The trailer has some creepy moments and I'll probably check this one out. Here's Eric Snider's take on the trailer.

Let the Right One In
If you're going to attempt a vampire movie these days then you damn well better do something different with the idea, and it looks like the people behind this Swedish bloodsucker opus are clear on that concept. A bullied 12 year old boy finds both friendship and a tool for revenge in his new girlfriend who happens to be a vampire. Scott caught this one at Tribeca and penned a pretty strong recommendation, and the flick will be playing on October 24 in New York City. Sadly, the rest of us are going to have to wait for the eventual DVD release.

House
No, it's neither that 80s horror flick starring William Katt or that doctor show on the Fox Network. This House is a horror flick in which two couples find themselves trapped in a remote house and stalked by a lunatic calling himself the Tin Man. This one seems to meld classic slasher stuff with elements of slaughterfests like Hostel and Saw, none of which really appeals to me, and the cast isn't particularly interesting. I think I'll let this one slide.

New this week on AOL Moviefone:

• Paul Blart: Mall Cop - Kevin James plays a man who finally gets his dream job as a working in mall security. Check out the trailer right here:
  
  
  
• The International - Clive Owen plays an interpol agent targeting corruption in the world's largest banking institutions.
• Passengers -Anne Hathaway stars as a grief counselor who suspects foul play when the plane crash survivors she is working with begin to disappear.
• Valkyrie - Tom Hanks Cruise stars in this historical drama about a plot to assassinate Hitler.
• Fears of the Dark - Animated horror anthology. Here's the preview:
  
  
  
• Bedtime Stories - Adam Sandler is a Dad who finds the bedtime stories he's been telling his kids are becoming reality.
• Notorious - Biopic of rap star Notorious B.I.G.
• The Pleasure of Being Robbed - Indie film about a young woman and her elaborate acts of theft.
• I've Loved You So Long - A woman returns to her family after fifteen years in prison.
• Hank and Mike - Two recently fired Easter Bunnies find that changing careers is tougher than they thought.
• Talento De Barrio - A Puerto Rican youth must choose between a life of crime and musical supestardom.