The Unborn

In this little-seen attempt at a thriller, Brooke Adams (The Dead Zone) and Jeff Hayenga (TV’s In the Heat of the Night) star as wannabe parents who, with the help of a prominent fertility specialist, finally conceive a child. But Mom’s expectant glow turns to a grimace when she senses that there’s something strange and evil about her baby-to-be. As it turns out, her doctor is not a fertility specialist at all but a geneticist trying to engineer a master race.

The Unborn does a better job as a gruesome parody of ’90s parenting (there’s a shot of a ”Baby on Board” sign dripping with blood) than as a suspense picture. The pace is excruciatingly slow, and the ending is, in a word, laborious. Still, the movie has its moments of bloody horror — particularly prenatal ones, so the pregnant should definitely pause before renting it. C