Lelia Goldoni's Virginia is an aging mouse of a woman. Yet she too can erupt into hysteria, or show tender compassion to her mutant son.
But it is Stephen Furst (Animal House) who shines as Junior Keller ... the unseen. One critic described Junior as a "murderous, retarded, overweight, full-grown baby." That's kinda what Junior looks like, but not really what he is.
Having seen The Unseen a dozen or so times, I suspect he kills the women by accident. He merely wants a closer look (at Lamm's golden hair, for instance), and pulls too hard. A child who doesn't know his own strength. And he's not a "full-grown baby," he just looks like one because he's fat, dressed in soiled diaper-like rags, and he can't talk. He can only grunt.
Okay actors. Here's an assignment: Portray a sympathetic mutant retard killer, while wearing soiled diaper-like rags, in makeup that makes you look like some ugly incestuous spawn from Deliverance. And all you're allowed to do is grunt. Grunt and stomp and pound and grunt. And oh yeah, try and be nuanced and subtle.
Furst does it.
His Junior is ugly and frightening, yet we detect his motivations beneath his grunting and stomping. His frustrated ineffectual attempts to communicate with Bach and recruit her for his playmate. His love for mom. His fear, then anger, at dad. However repulsive and scary and unsympathetic Junior initially appears, his demise is poignant. I hesitate to equate Furst's Junior with Karloff's Monster, but I also hesitate to dismiss the comparison out of hand.
The script is tightly structured, its elements falling neatly together despite more complexity than cursorily appears. You can view The Unseen many times, and still discover new things to appreciate.
E. Michael Jones, in his Monsters From the Id: The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film, interprets all horror as a monster (nemesis) spawned by a transgression of God's (sexual) moral code. The Unseen easily allows for that interpretation. Junior is born of incest, most likely rape. Bach contemplates an abortion because she is not ready to marry Barr until he matures. She is rescued moments after Barr returns (having changed his mind), thereby affirming their mutual love (and by implication, obviating the need for an abortion).
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