THE UNBORN II
Way better than expected

  All I remember about the first Unborn movie is Lisa Kudrow, who got all of two lines and managed to refer to sperm in both of them.

As for this movie, it's hard to have much in the way of expectations.  That is, I guess, why the opening of this movie was so effective for me - and I may be blowing it for you by pointing out that it's good.  Well, it's a hell of an opener.

Michele Greene plays a single mother who moves into a lovely suburban home with her six-month-old baby Joey.  She meets the world's most obnoxious neighbors, the kind of people who make you appreciate the good side of becoming so insular that you can live in the same house for fifteen years and not know your neighbors' names.  Really, really annoying people here.  Luckily, their daughter Sally Ann (Brittney Powell) is really, really, REALLY hot, and lends further evidence toward my theory that red shirts make breasts appear bigger.

Now, it's a good bet that there's something a little different about Joey because he's never shown early in the film, and this is, after all, one of those "bloodthirsty baby" movies that keep cropping up every four years or so.  Hey, I think we're due for another one.  Robin Curtis - "Mister" Saavik from two Star Trek movies, if you'll recall - is also here as a woman who clearly knows more about these kids than she's telling anybody.  Scott Valentine plays a hunky neighbor who protects our heroine from those nasty child-welfare people.

Some of the subject matter here goes well beyond tacky into appalling - but in a time when so few horror movies push any boundaries, that's kinda refreshing.  The villain isn't presented as an evil monster, just somebody saddled with an extraordinarily unpleasant job, desperately trying to carry it out.  And the plot contains some surprises - not big shocking ones (well, maybe two), but it avoids clichés I'd expected it to use, and takes some fresh directions I hadn't anticipated.

This is by no means a great movie.  The scenes with this baby are the hardest to take seriously - glimpsed from behind, he appears to have a papier-mache head, very limited animatronics for its body, and sounds like one of the Gremlins.  When its face is shown, the effects are just terrible.  There are also two shootout scenes which aren't exactly John Woo.

But still, I found myself very much surprised by how entertained I was by this film, and by the time the climax came around, I no longer cared how fake that baby was - it's fun to see it smashed up against the wall a few times anyway.  I'm not gonna jump up and down demanding that everybody see this movie (Brian jumps up and down and demands that everybody go rent Ravenous), but hey, it's still a recommendation.

Also known as Baby Blood II, as if to suggest it's a sequel not to The Unborn, but to The Evil Within (also known as - natch - Baby Blood) (which, curiously featured a poster for Baby Blood 2 in that very film).  

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