Movie Review:

The Forgotten

   One way to look at The Forgotten is that it underestimates its audience more than any film in recent memory.  At one point, a character tells Julianne Moore that "the truth won't fit inside your brain."  The rest of the film operates on a similar level, doling out mostly vague hints about where it's going, seeming to assume that the audience, like the characters, can't cope with the details.  It doesn't seem to realize that it isn't that hard to follow.

    That's the charitable viewpoint.  The other viewpoint is that the film simply doesn't have that much to say, and that's the one I'm inclined to believe.

    Briefly, The Forgotten actually suggests that Telly (Moore) might be delusional, imagining a son who never existed despite the urgings of her husband (Anthony Edwards), and her shrink (Gary Sinise)'s suggestion that she suffers from paramnesia, a condition in which people invent things that never happened, in this case an entire life.  That idea is pretty quickly dropped, though no one who saw the trailer will be fooled in the first place.  There is a brief suggestion that Telly leads Ash (Dominic West) into remembering his daughter thanks to folie à deux, a condition in which a delusional person can cause another to have similar delusions, but by the time it's made, any lingering doubts that Moore's son existed have been washed away by the sudden appearance of shady-looking NSA agents and, most improbably, some sort of giant space vacuum that can apparently suck people into the sky with pinpoint accuracy.

    Of course, actually attempting to look at psychological issues like paramnesia or folie à deux might be interesting, and who wants that when there are cheap scares to be telegraphed?  James Horner's bland, didactic score doesn't help a film already hopelessly mired in convention, but it serves its purpose as something to drop out of the soundtrack right before a jump scene.  What The Forgotten thinks is scary and what actually is scary are two pretty different things, however.

    What does the film have to offer?  Very little in terms of plot - far more time is spent on various chase scenes than on any serious exposition.  Even when a bit of the story is doled out, it's usually rather vague, and the film's resolution does nothing to improve on the twist revealed ages before.  The whole affair is silly and unsatisfying, and culminates with an effects shot that looks more suited for the Sci-Fi Channel than the big screen.

    The cast seems fairly game, although most seem to know they belong in a better movie.  Moore's lead performance is fine, but she's given surprisingly little to do, and besides West, every name actor feels wasted in minor, uninteresting roles. The Forgotten is the sort of film where the cast is pretty irrelevant, though.  It's hard to conceive of any of the dialogue being delivered very well, on general principles alone.

    There is a line in science fiction between the interesting and the just plain ridiculous. The Forgotten starts on the interesting side, then runs to the ridiculous side in such a hurry that by the end of the movie it's hard to remember a point where the plot made sense, or was even worth thinking about.

    Forget your brain.  The truth of The Forgotten would have no trouble fitting inside a thimble.  D

The Forgotten is a Columbia Pictures release.  Rated for intense thematic material, some violence and brief language.