Starring Odette Yustman and Gary Oldman. Rated 14A. Now playing.

As soon as The Unborn’s end credits started to roll, a guy seated two rows down from me at the promotional screening declared: “That sucked!” I couldn’t have said it better myself—unless I’d added “donkey dicks!” to the assessment.

Cloverfield’s smokin’ hot Odette Yustman stars as Chicago college student Casey Beldon, who suffers nightmares about, and visions of, an undead twerp with icey blue eyes. After she gets smucked in the face with a mirror by another miserable brat—who ominously intones, “He wants to be born now”—one of her eyes starts changing colour. A doctor explains that the weird iris action is a rare condition that sometimes affects twins, and soon after Casey’s dad (a slumming James Remar) confesses that she did indeed have a twin, nicknamed Jumby—who was strangled in the womb by her umbilical cord.

Before you can say “unholy vengeance from the grave”, potato bugs are invading Casey’s breakfast and a dog with an upside-down head is menacing Rabbi Sendak (Gary Oldman), who decides it’s time for a good old Jewish exorcism.

In an abandoned asylum of her choice, Casey gets bound to a gurney and, to boost the kink quotient, ball-gagged before Sendak ceremonially blows on a huge, jewel-encrusted animal horn.

As expected, all hell breaks loose once Jumby shows up and starts possessing everyone in sight, making eyes turn icey blue and backs fold violently in two. I kept hoping Oldman would revert to his Sid & Nancy punk persona and kick the little freak in the yarbles like some pain-deserving Springsteen fan, but no such luck. He just carries on with the Hebrew mumbo jumbo until you’re sure he’ll either burst out laughing at the sheer nonsense of it all or break down crying at this career misstep.