Unborn But Forgotten (DVD)

I would say that Unborn But Forgotten is a total rip-off of FearDotCom, but both movies were released in the same year (2002). More like an assembly-line copycat of Ringu, this South Korean horror thriller follows Su-Jin (Eun-joo Lee), a girl reporter making a documentary film about a series of mysterious deaths involving women who died after visiting a the website of a certain women’s clinic… one that advertises abortions. Being a woman and apparently unable to solve anything by herself, Su-Jin joins forces with a male cop (Jun-ho Jeong) and goes through the motions till the end-credits roll.

Coincidence of coincidences, it turns out that Su-Jin is pregnant by her emotionally unavailable boyfriend. To add to her stress, once she visits that “certain” website and contemplates aborting her love child, she’s given just 15 days to live by the webmaster/ghost of the infamous White Room site. (I wonder which software they use — DemonWeaver? Phantom Page?) As Unborn But Forgotten toddles along, you begin to wish the ghost was stingier (the FearDotCom boogeyman only gave its visitors two days to live).

Unborn But Forgotten is a pretty movie to look at. Like most of the Korean output (as compared to the Japanese and Chinese low-budget films of the same ilk), it’s stylish and glossy. But unlike most of the Korean horror films I’ve seen lately, there is absolutely nothing beneath the veneer. There are some gory scenes, but they are so bloodless when it comes to originality that they might as well be hastily sketched storyboards.

By the time the identity of the malevolent killer is uncovered Unborn But Forgotten has kidded around so much that its audience (assuming they’re still watching) will have figured it out for themselves long before the “reveal”. This was obviously an attempt to cash in and clearly not a labor of love for anyone involved.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson