Have you seen the Unborn? No?
Yeah, don’t bother.
The demon in the Unborn movie is called a Dybbuk – originating from Jewish folklore with (behavioral) characteristics that remind us too much of changelings: evil spirits that possess and take over people’s bodies.
In the movie, when dybbuk possessed, it twisted and bent its host to fit its own liking.
So far, all this made perfect, uninspiring sense. So imagine my horror when I saw that the American dybbuk’s idea of modifying its host is to make it look and walk like – watch this – the Javanese demon Banaspati.
The Banaspati, by the way, behaves and looks a lot like the Japanese demon Tenjōkudari
Banaspatis and Tenjōkudaris do not possess. They just haunt abandoned houses and spook unwanted visitors. Being confused with the Dybbuk would’ve insulted all three.
It’s awful. I know.
Hollywood has no right to abuse cultural and demonic facts like they do.
Especially in a movie as badly written as the Unborn.
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There are a lot of stories about fairies and demons that are cross culturally similar.
The elders in my Javanese village recall witnessing a demon by the name Tundun Belis which looks like a carriage without a coachman, picks up trash and disease from villages near their dwellings, and dispose of them in the ocean.
In Europeah culture, Death is sometimes illustrated traveling in a horseless carriage.
In Japanese culture, there’s the Wanyūdō.
And don’t get me started on the internationally famed dragons, vampires, body snatchers and ladies of the lake. Almost every culture in the world has them, they do the same job/spooks, but hold different names.
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So here’s my question.
- If a lot of people have experienced demons (enough to catalogue them) then could it be possible that demons ARE REAL?
- If demons are real, even though we can’t see them (anymore), then could it be possible that other beings might also be real without us seeing them?
- More importantly, who/how keeps the demonic realm separated from ours?
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I’m surprised that you’ve read this far. I know this isn’t a generic Hning kinda thing to post. I just had to get it out there.
That the Unborn was a terrible movie.
Wishing you a good Good Friday.
(PS. I don’t think that demonic possessions are worse than – say falling under the possession a Nintendo DS and other fascinating things like that. A dybbuk might possess you to clean the house and that would be a good thing, right? Anyway…)
(PPS. If someone asked, this is how I critically came to believe in an Ultimate God. I live in a village with too many overly-expressive Banaspatis in them, man.)
