Stream it now The Forgotten 2004

 

Another one of my favorite movie rate 8

I saw this movie ages ago and I thought it was a bit rubbish. The whole story and twist is really stupid and made no sense. I don't really have much else to say about this film. I don't really remember much of it, so it probably didn't have much of an impact on me. All I remember is that it was pretty lame.

Grade: E

Short review:

It's always fun to watch good mystery movies, were you get sucked into the mystery and surprises you in every turn. The Forgotten is unfortunately not that kind of a movie. She is rather like a second class version of an X-files or a Twilight Zone episode.

The first 30 minutes are pretty good and get you pretty much sucked in. The movie comes up with a mysterious line of events with a very quick narration. Another good element of Julianne Moore. She has not actually shown a poor performance since she started getting real work but considering what kind of movie this is, she is able to give a extremely strong and powerful performance.

But it isn't enough to only be mysterious and mostly well acted because when some of the answers begin to be revealed, the movie takes an extremely boring turn. The mystery affect disappears and the last minutes of the movie become uninteresting. For a moment I thought they had changed directors because the story went from being interesting into just plain stupid. I thought some of this stuff was hilarious and obviously it wasn't meant to be, but this happens when directors make the movie take it self a bit too serious.

The ending really bugged me. I thought he was playing with the viewer a bit too much. I was expecting something completely different that was not so Anti-climax. The simplicity makes you think "Was that it?"

3/10 -- The title says it all, it's easily forgotten.

If I ever wanted to tell a movie to go fuck itself, this would be it. I'm a grown ass man, I'm supposed to believe a fucking soccer mom can battle fucking highly intelligent, powerful, technologically superior all knowing aliens, just because she loves her son. Fuck this shit. Fuck the premise for this movie. Coolest part of the movie is how the aliens suck humans up into the air whenever they feel like it, but the movie can go fuck themselves cause *PLOT HOLE* they never bothered to suck Moore's character into the air when she was causing all those problems. The first 30 minutes is an intriguing mystery, the rest, is horse shit. Seriously this movie's concept and execution can go fuck itself.

1.5 out of 4

* Spoiler Alert * May contain key plot points

Friendly Man: There are worst things than forgetting.
Telly: No, there aren't.

Julliane Moore plays Telly Paretta, a mother whose son ,Sam, has died in a airplane crash. One day, all the videos and pictures she kept of her boy are suddenly blank. She demands an explanation from her husband, but he and her psychiatrist both say that she had a miscarriage and Sam doesn't exist. She runs away when they try to hospitalize her, and finds her old friend, Ash, has forgotten his own daughter who was friends with Sam. But suddenly, after she is taken by the police from his home, memories rush to him and he manages to help her escape from the police. They go on a hunt to find out who, or what, has taken everybodies memories and made their children the forgotten.

The premise is interesting, but the plot gets really unbelievingly weird. In the trailer it is apparent that aliens are at work and that they have something to do with the disappearance of memories, but it doesn't work. It becomes really dumb. When you find out what is really happening, it gets unconvincing. The climax was ridiculously corny and makes the movie fall flat.

Julliane Moore's acting is good in this film, but she fails to convince the emotions of a mother told that their beloved child was imaginary. I like Dominic West, but he didn't do it for me, either. He looked kind of stupid when he realized that his little girl existed.

The ending scene in the playground was predictable and pretty dumb, but it does give a sense of closure. I liked some of the thrills and chase scenes in the film, although the average person would think " How can one woman outrun the entire government system and not get caught once?". There is a scene where a detective finally believes Telly, but she is violently Pulled out of Telly's case, so to speak. It comes out of nowhere and scared the hell out of me, but other than Ash's capture by the aliens, thats about the only thrill in the film.

Its a shame that this movie didn't turn out to be better, because I love science fiction and the cast and story were good. But overall, it's a bad movie that may be good for only a moment of ridiculous alien indulgence. The title is oddly the category this movie lies in: The Forgotten.

what in the hell was this thing? Some sort of Matrix plot with bad acting and a low budget? Wow, I'm just loving movies like this that ruin the reputation for movies in general.

An intriguing and interesting movie with plenty of twists and turns,

Dumb. Ending was even dumber. Don't bother...

This has to be one of the strangest movies I have seen. We have a woman who seems like she might be somewhat crazy, as she struggles with the death of a son, that everyone around her claims she never had. Yet, for some reason she goes on rants trying to prove that he exists, even though everything associated to him seems to disappear.

The are questions you ask yourself while you are watching the first half of this movie. Is she seeing the things she was convinced were there, or is it all in her head. And, if it's true, someone is going through an aweful lot of trouble to convince this poor woman that her child imagined or not should be removed from every aspect of her life.

Then, the government agents come into play. And, a stranger that seems to be everywhere she goes. Then, she discovers someone who also had a child who was in this "accident", only he doesn't even remember having a child, until she does something drastic to convince him.

The problem with this movie is that, they give away what is going on too soon. I think if they had left the government agents out of the movie, and just went with the local police on the case and the stranger, the movie would have been a lot better. Keep us guessing until the end.

I will say that this was certainly a very interesting story.
The main charactors acting was very good, and, there were certainly some moments where you would think things would only get worse, and then, there is the end of the movie.
Which was kind of an ok moment.

I don't know, this movie just had a lot of unanswered questions, and, with all that was going on, the ending of the movie just didn't go over well with me. I think, they should have left us hanging, and made the forgotten Too!

Read the title: The name says it all.






Movie Review:
The Forgotten

(Out of 5)

PLOTLINE: *1/2
SPECIAL EFFECTS: **
SCRIPT: ***
ACTING: ****


Picture this: You wake up one day, a normal day. Sun is shining, maybe a cloud or two in the sky. Cars buzz through the busy city as usual. The only thing out of the ordinary is the fact that you seem to be the only one who remembers that you had a son. Seemingly everyone in the world is trying to convince you that every memory you hold dear is a lie and that your baby boy never existed.
Gripping right? I thought so too. That's why on a Friday night, I picked it up from a blockbuster-near-me, sat down with some friends and cookie dough, and clicked play on the DVD player. Looking back, I probably should've rented the Grudge III.
In this film, mother Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) is a regular visitor to a psychologist's office, trying to get past the unbearable grief of her son's death. From the start, you notice little things are off about Telly. That is, she tends to occasionally manufacture memories, such as drinking a cup of tea that was never poured for her.
But as the film progresses, her husband and psychologist alike break some unexpected and life-shattering news to Telly: Her son never existed. And all the memories? Manufactured by her subconscious after grieving a miscarriage.
But Telly is not the only victim. She turns to fellow parent Ash Correll (Dominic West), whose daughter used to play with Telly's son Eliot. But upon finding him in his apartment, all signs of his little girl are gone, and it seems at first that she too never existed. Of course with love the never-fail cure by his side, he soon finds traces of his daughter inside the apartment--her drawings. He quickly meets up with Telly and together, they are determined to find evidence that they're children are out there.
Upon hearing the plot, I was intrigued. And for a good half an hour, the film had my mind reeling and my head tilted to the side, wondering who was right? The psychologist or Telly? Why doesn't Ash remember his daughter as quickly as Telly remembers Eliot? Possible government conspiracy?

I'm pretty sure that the government does not yet have the ability to hide their secret headquarters in a sickly obvious ring-shaped cloud. So when Telly notices this sitting heavy in the sky and proceeds to ask Ash if ever feels like he's being watched, I shook my head in shame.

That's right. No government conspiracy, no psychological twist at the end taking place in a padded room somewhere over the crazy trainbow. Just another badly incorporated sci-fi subplot buried within a seemingly decent thriller.

Had the movie not taken a turn for the strangely supernatural, I probably would've enjoyed the whole thing through. But as soon as Telly looks up, the quality of this movie goes down...the toilet.

While the acting delivered from Oscar winning Julianne Moore and Critic's choice Dominic West was solid, I just wish they could've used their talents in a more deserving film. Of course, we've seen Julianne Moore in her share of sci-fi, including supernatural comedy Evolution and a title everyone should be familiar with, Jurassic Park II. Now, I'll admit, neither of these movies have plots that are solidly believable, but The Forgotten takes this to a new level. At least the other two mentioned films are based on a scientific fact...well, what most people accept to be fact.

And finally, my number one pet peeve about this film: the choice of scenes. I realize this isn't something that critics usually incorporate into their reviews, but think about it. The selection of which scenes should stay and which should get shoved into the special edition disk is very important to the quality of the film. When I watched the deleted scenes, the extended scene at the end in which Telly finds out what is going on was 110% more informative than the scene chosen for the film. While shorter, the scene in the theatrical version had me scratching my head and left much to be desired.

There's not much more I can say about this movie. The first almost half, while entertaining, collapses into itself quicker than a dying star. And while I can understand the writers' desire to create an original screenplay, I don't agree with feeling the need to throw sci-fi into the recipe. Anyone can do that with virtually any movie. Catherine Heigl could've owned 27 dresses because "those from the stars" commanded her to.

In the end? The Forgotten is just that: forgettable. The plot falls apart as soon as aliens are brought into the mix, at which point it is deemed rotten and too unbelievable to be entertaining. Bottom line; you want to put on a movie with your friends and talk throughout the whole thing without worrying about what your missing? Rent and forget this film. Rent and forget.