The Unborn (2009)

This may dabble in Jewish mysticism and the legacy of the Nazi era but scratch the surface and you discover just another standard scary movie.

Unsatisfying, hokey and never that scary (unless you’re the type who jumps at every loud noise or sudden appearance in this sort of movie), The Unborn outstays even its brief lifespan.

Packed with very scary moments and very disturbing images, this is not for the faint-hearted - that includes me.

The script tries hard to delve into the folklore of a dybbuk, and as it mixes this in with experiments on twins in concentration camps during WW2, the story becomes too convoluted for its own good.

Despite some gruesome special effects, the telling of this story is so prosaic and predictable that genuine thrills are in very short supply.

Despite some massive flaws and a disappointing over-reliance on jump scares, The Unborn is comfortably the best entry yet from Platinum Dunes, Michael Bay’s previously remake-happy horror production outfit.

David S Goyer’s non-kosher riff on ‘The Exorcist’ is stillborn,

Brazen in its borrowings and alternating between cynicism and silliness, this is a creatively barren effort that should have been stopped at conception.

It’s hard to imagine a more ham-fisted attempt at the genre of ‘womb horror’ than this flat-footed supernatural drama with a Jewish twist.

A scary movie so fantastically stupid and crass it made my skull contract and my sinuses harden to the consistency of pipe-cleaners.