Sunday 3 September 2017

Movie Review: Bornless Ones (2017)

In Bornless Ones (2017), Emily and her partner, Jesse, move to Ye Old Cabin in the Woods so that they'll be closer to her disabled brother, Zach, when he goes into a care facility. Their friends, Woodrow and Michelle, come along to help, apparently, though their major contributions are drinking and being obnoxious. They also manage to remove the boards concealing the sigils keeping a host of demons trapped inside the house.


Zach is a spastic quadroplegic with cerebral palsy, which was a little distracting for me because of the emphasis on a car accident that he and his mother suffered some time before. It wasn't really clear if his illnesses were related to one another or the accident or (until much later) how his illnesses affected him. Since the whole movie revolved around Zach, it was important to clear those things up early on.

The way that information was presented in Bornless Ones wasn't ideal. There was just way too much tell - one person explaining something to another in detail. Show over tell is even more important in movies but Bornless Ones fails to pull it off.

It does, however, excel in lighting, which is soft and well managed. The lighting in Bornless Ones contributes to the movie's eerie atmosphere, as does the film's grainy quality, which makes it feel older than it is. Scares come easily in this one - exactly where you expect them, though, unfortunately. The scene changes are seamless so Bornless Ones moves forward smoothly and has good pace.


The movie is gory, which my husband would count as a plus. Me, not so much. I'm the squeamish one. Bornless Ones doesn't pull any punches; it's quite visceral, starting with compound fractures in the first scene.

A couple of things about Bornless Ones irritated me. Firstly, the actress playing Emily could. Not. Act. She had one expression: gormless. So irritating. Then, there was Woodrow the jackass, who openly humiliated Zach but then was suddenly worried about fucking his girlfriend in case it hurt their unborn child. Character inconsistencies irritate me even more than bad acting. And, speaking of unborn children... Michelle throwing back the beers while pregnant didn't exactly make me care whether she lived or died.

Despite the things that annoyed me about Bornless Ones, it's a good, strong movie. Except, maybe the ending. They really shouldn't have gone for the happy ending. It didn't suit the movie. Still worth a watch, though.

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