Review of Unborn But Forgotten (Tartan Asia Extreme)

Introduction

Tartan`s A-horror, or more precisely, K-horror release sees the lovely Sun-jin making a documentary by following around South Korean detective Lee Seok going about his daily business. But when he investigates a recent death, Sun-jin finds herself drawn into a web of supernatural mystery involving an enigmatic website, which once visited, spells imminent doom and a rather grisly death.

Who needs preamble witticisms with a synopsis like that!?

Video

Given the anamorphic widescreen treatment with a ratio of 1.85:1, `Unborn But Forgotten``s soft transfer uses some severe looking edge enhancement to give the lines an appearance of definition, and is the victim of a terrible shudder effect, particularly prevalent during static scenes which see the picture bounce all over the shop. Worryingly grainy for a fairly recent release, the transfer also suffers from some truly woeful aliasing, possibly the worst you`ll see outside of badly transferred animation or a current-gen video game. To top it all off, the colours are washed out, with a low contrast palette and some noticeable bleeding onto the whites. Blech!

Audio

Although the all the options are there, in native Korean with accompanying English subtitles - Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0, each track is a purely pedestrian affair, with the DTS particularly disappointing with all the fanfare associated with the brand. Sporting the directional aptitude of Christopher Columbus, there is little effect from the surround soundstage on either of the 5.1 tracks, but the dialogue is mostly clear and distortion-free.

Features

There`s a 60-minute `On The Set` feature, a behind-the-scenes doo-dah that is actually a behind-the-scenes doo-dah, with seemingly one guy and his camera poking around the sets during filming, make-up, rehearsals, etc. With no interviews or dialogue to break it up, it`s a bit of a chore to wade through the whole thing, although little snippets can be diverting enough - it`s kind of like being the tea boy on set, where you get to nosey in on everyone but no-one takes any notice of you. There`s also a... wait for it... wait for it... trailer.

Conclusion

Malevolent, but misunderstood ghosties, hidden secrets, curses, mysterious apartments and a spunky young female protagonist with a proclivity to poke her nose too deep and paint a big ol` bullseye on her noggin, making it easy for all manner of supernatural nastiness to come crashing down on her. Cliché? Hell no, A-horror doesn`t do cliché. If the powers that be want to churn out a second-rate Eastern horror, they simply cut and paste. In that respect, `Unborn But Forgotten` is a decidedly unholy mash-up of every popular, first-tier A-horror; a real Frankenstein`s monster of a film, which, like Mary Shelley`s fictional stitch n` sew creation, is severely lacking in soul - only chasing this misfire with torches and pitchforks would be just about justified. Workmanlike in almost every respect, showing little ambition and flawed execution, and given a rather funky DVD release - funky as in spoiled cheese/body odour, sadly not of the Rick James/Sly and the Family Stone variety - means this is one to miss.

To be fair, there`s a strong element of overlapping themes and ideas in most A-horrors, but `Unborn But Forgotten` is pretty much a straight riff on the plot of `Ring`, given the old change-a-bit-here-and-there treatment, but with few fresh ideas of its own. Discovering eerie goings on videotape, spirits communicating via technology, the male-female investigation team with a deadly death deadline, all the hallmarks of the genre ripe for the picking. But throw in some dull, predictable humour and Leslie Nielsen, and you`d have a fairly valiant spoof on Hideo Nakata`s sublime horror masterwork, so closely does the film stick with its far, far superior kinsman`s narrative. Despite borrowing so heavily from critical and commercial successes like `Ring`, Kairo`, `Ju-On` and their ilk, `Unborn But Forgotten` somehow manages to completely fluff generating sufficient interest in its far too convoluted and illogical story, let alone coming close to captivating its audience. It`s the entirely pedestrian efforts all round that are to blame - forced performances, trite dialogue (for once the localisation team aren`t in the spotlight), meandering plot complete with nefarious leaps in logic and giant, chasm-like holes, bland score; heck, even the cameramen seem to be on the verge of falling asleep.

But perhaps the biggest hand cannon in the arsenal of woeful tricks is the direction. When you take all the best bits from good movies and still manage to mess it up, there`s only one doorstep it can fall at. Completely lacking in energy, Chang-jae Lim`s weak helmsmanship has no gas for tension or scares, the most important one-two combination in the horror handbook. When the scares are cranked up and let loose, they`re lacking punch and originality; a pair of feet where there should be no feet, lights going down, kettles boiling over at just the right moment, all hindered by some stodgy editing and the typically interminable set-up of dark corridors and aimless wandering - from this day forward known as `Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?` syndrome. The whole effort does zilch to buck the Tartan trend of buying up any old tat, giving it a slap-dash UK release and sitting back as Joe Public horror-fan, dazzled by the better examples in the genre, lap it up in an attempt to bulk up the foreign language section of their DVD collections. Actress Eun-ju Lee, who played Su-jin, sadly committed suicide in 2005, which may help ensure `Unborn But Forgotten` holds a morbid curio status among certain elements, but the film`s only real redeeming feature is that there actually are worse examples of the genre out there. Which isn`t much of a redeeming feature at all, really.