The Unborn (2009)

Don't be fooled by this promotional poster, people! The Unborn, starring Odette Yustman as Casey Beldon, is kind of boring and unappealing. The movie does contain a few interesting scenes, though, and most of them revolve around ophthalmology.

Surely you remember learning about Josef Mengele, aka The Angel of Death, in high school. This Nazi physician at Auschwitz was apparently obsessed with twins, and used them in terrible experiments in concentration camps. The experiments included intraocular injections of various chemicals in an attempt to change eye color.

This real-life historical horror movie provides the back-story for The Unborn, and one of these injections is shown in a flashback sequence. As you might imagine, chemical injections in the eye can cause some major complications, and corneal clouding is seen in the victim in later scenes.

However, the most interesting eye-related content involves Casey Beldon's changing eye color and her subsequent evaluation by an ophthalmologist, Dr. Lester Caldwell. We covered iris heterochromia in an earlier Ophthalmology in Film entry, but to review:

Iris heterochromia may occur as a congentital condition (usually inherited as an autosomal dominant trait), or it may be acquired as a result of retained intraocular foreign body, topical medications, iris neoplasm, ICE syndrome, Fuchs' heterochromic iridocyclitis, Horner's syndrome, chronic iritis, juvenile xanthogranuloma, leukemia, or lymphoma.

I'll try to avoid a spoiler by letting you pick among the differential diagnosis list for our protagonist! Ophthalmology scenes in this movie include the aforementioned intraocular injection, an exam and consultation by the ophthalmologist, insertion of an eyelid speculum, and slit lamp photography.

The fact that I fell asleep twice during the climactic exorcism scene is telling. This meandering movie has some interesting historical tidbits and some strong eye-related content, but otherwise is a mishmash of disturbing images and horror cliches. I give The Unborn a C - . But don't just take my word for it, here is a quote from Wikipedia to wrap up this entry:

The Unborn received an overwhelmingly negative reaction from critics. Based on 96 reviews collected from notable publications, the film garnered a "Rotten" rating of 13% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.