The Unborn (1991)

Virginia and Brad Marshall (Brooke Adams, Jeff Hayenga) are a young couple that have had no luck having children.  In fact, after several miscarriages, Virginia has been told that she can never have children.  However, on the recommendation of one of Brad's coworkers, the couple give it one last go at a fertility clinic run by Dr. Richard Meyerling (James Karen), who promises that they will have a baby.

At first it looks as if the promise will be fulfilled.  However, strange things begin to happen.  Their friends' two-year-old murders her brother and another woman from the clinic, Beth (Jane Cameron), begins to believe that the baby she is carrying isn't hers.  After some research it is found that Meyerling is working on the human genome project and is using the women at his clinic to experiment on - a fact that comes to light when a test on Beth's baby comes back with the wrong number of chromosomes.

Every time that Virginia learns a little bit of the truth the baby inside of her takes over a little more, manipulating her actions so that she is hostile toward loved ones and appears unstable to those around her.  Desperate to be rid of it she goes to a (literal) back-alley abortionist.  Unfortunately, though removed, the baby lives and calls to her.  It also turns out Meyerling has some other ideas and Virginia endeavors to stop him.

Early on the film is a badly edited, horribly acted mess.  I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into this time, as I was hoping that my recent luck would hold.  Yes, I've seen some awful films of late, but at least they had some style.  This was almost bad to the level of porn acting in some parts.

Sticking with it wasn't what I would call rewarding, but there are a number of parts in here that place it squarely in the '80s (although I know this came out in 1991) realm of horror, where directors were not afraid to go over the top.  The baby itself is particularly nightmare inducing and this contained an extremely difficult scene involving animal abuse (simulated, of course, but still disturbing).  The plot is ultimately ridiculous and borrows heavily from Rosemary's Baby (just without the Devil, which I'm surprised they didn't throw in at the end) and this is definitely amateurish trash.  Still, it does have parts that actually work, even though I can't necessarily recommend it based on them.

The Unborn (1991)
Time: 83 minutes
Starring: Brooke Adams, Jeff Hayenga, James Karen
Director: Rodman Flender


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