When you take all the kid stuff out of Disney’s A Christmas Carol, it’s quite a good film. But those meddling kids…

As one of the most oft-told holiday stories, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol hardly needs any summary: crotchety old man gets visited by three ghosts and sees the error of his ways. Been there, seen it. Maybe even read it.

Since the story has had countless film treatments over the years, it’s really how it’s told that distinguishes one version from the next. Director Robert Zemeckis resurrects his animation style from The Polar Express to give Dickens’ cautionary tale another visit. Fortunately this time Zemeckis manages to avoid the dead eye issue that plagued his last holiday treat.

The role of Ebenezer Scrooge (or his equivalent) has been played by all sorts of actors and scenarios, from Michael Caine (opposite the Muppets), to singing Kelsey Grammer, to Mickey Mouse, to Bill Murray in Scrooged (always a personal favorite). So it was probably only a matter of time before Jim Carrey attached a prosthetic nose and stooped over to fill the miser’s shoes.

Taking a page from an Eddie Murphy movie, Carrey plays opposite himself as all three of the visiting ghosts. Since one is a flaming candle, one a portly jolly tub of man, and one a skeleton, it’s tough to tell it’s Carry behind all of the make-up and animation. Actually, all of the make-up and animation make it tough to tell what he is doing at all.

Carrey is most effective when he isn’t acting like a fool as seen in Ace Ventura or The Mask. Dour Scrooge is much better than the light-hearted version, who becomes more cartoonish – and more old school Carrey. He’s joined by a bevy of actors in the supporting roles, including Colin Firth and Gary Oldman – and Cary Elwes and Robin Wright Penn in a nice Princess Bride reunion – but this is really a vehicle for the lead star.

The heart of Zemeckis’ film, which he also wrote, is dark and dreary. Even with the animation, it’s quite adult. The language is lyrical at times, dated in content and style that is going to fly over young kids like Santa in his sleigh. But the more concerning content are the fire and brimstone moments. For example, Scrooge hangs onto a root to avoid falling into his glowing red coffin and it slowly transforms into a boney finger. It’s an incredibly effective moment that deserves to be applauded for its crafting, but it’s frightening nevertheless.

Yet it’s this more-grown up nature that makes the film enjoyable and the moments of whimsy feel out of place. When Carrey plays the Ghost of Christmas Past and appears as a lit candle, his affectations and lisp are distracting; when Scrooge become a tiny version of himself, squeaking in a high-pitched voice and getting tossed around like a rag doll, it’s filler. Zemeckis doesn’t walk the line between the two extremes with any finesse and it’s one of the few – albeit big – faults with the film.

Where Zemeckis shines is in the visuals. Showing in 3-D in many theaters, the experience of the film is thoroughly enjoyable. Some of the shot perspectives are clearly designed to show off the 3-D technology and seem forced, but others are pure wonders. Between snow falling and Scrooge flying, there’s a whole lot of eye candy packed into this stocking.

Zemeckis has taken an old standard and wrapped it in new, shiny paper for this holiday season. While it may not seem like the first present you want to open, it’s certainly not going to get returned on December 26th.

From the outset, you get the impression that the film is one to hunker down with — to study the elements and appreciate the slow-paced storytelling and the careful framing. Casey (Yustman) is quietly out for a jog when she notices a solitary blue glove laying in her path. Picking it up, she then encounters a young boy with similarly blue eyes, who in a blink turns into an ominous dog donning a mask. It’s creepy imagery and appropriately paced, but the reverence for Goyer’s style quickly falls away as the director shows all of his cards, revealing his reliance on trite tactics of the genre. A bevy of useless scenes come at you, literally, in order to incite a scare. The screeching brakes of a subway train suddenly come into frame; the ghostly child’s face lunges at your view for no reason at all. And when the chips are down, Goyer sloppily hurries through scenes seemingly violating his own rules of the story. If the dybbuk, the evil spirit following Casey, wants to be reborn through her, why is it violently attacking her? And if it can inhabit anyone’s body, what’s with all the foreplay?

Titillating the audience is clearly on Goyer’s mind, considering his brazen use of sex-selling in the film. Can you recall a hotter horror couple than Casey and Mark (Cam Gigandet)? As Casey continues to battle her dreams and hallucinations of the dead boy, whom she soon learns is actually her fraternal twin who died in childbirth, her bathroom mirror becomes ground zero. In the story, mirrors (and twins) are gateways — “the doorway is open” is repeated numerous times — which affords many a scene of Casey waking up in the middle of the night in her taught undies to investigate. Such sequences were seemingly important enough for Goyer to even have it on the official poster for the film. Sex sells, after all. You can chalk up pointless scenes of Mark shirtless or the disconnect when Casey says she needs fresh air (and she actually goes to take a sexy shower) to sloppy convention. But the use of a glory hole as a conduit for evil is wholly unorthodox. Maybe Goyer is trying to tell us something about public sex. Doubtful. However, an intention like that would have made more sense.

As Yustman tries to manifest the needed emotion for Casey’s character, it becomes clear that the actress and the film’s writing has limited range. You see Casey’s world collapsing around her, but you wouldn’t know it by reading Yustman’s face. And you would think she’d be really upset, considering that she knows so much about what afflicts her. Playing a well-worn card of genre, Goyer includes extended scenes wherein Casey recites clearly and calming what’s happening and what’s next. Just in case the audience wasn’t keeping up. When she takes an ancient tome to Rabbi Sendak (Gary Oldman) asking for an exorcism, she confidently informs him to translate the text to perform the ceremony, despite either knowing how to read Hebrew. And when she fills her best friend in on why she broke all the mirrors in her house, you get the distinct feeling Casey is reading from the book “How-To: A Guide to Defeating the Dead Evil Twin Who Wants My Uterus.”

Goyer has clearly (and disappointingly) miscarried with The Unborn. While I appreciate leveraging real folklore, creating a notable scare or two, and convincing the wonderful Gary Oldman (and Idris Elba) to join the cast, there’s just so much to dislike about this film. “I want a Catholic exorcism!” Casey blandly demands, as if she’s picking from a Chinese menu. Let’s hope this experience will at least exercise whatever deluded demon inhabited Goyer, and convince the studio to wear protection next time. We don’t need another one like this running around.