The Forgotten - 2004

by Catherine Leopold - 2008-10-03

Julianne Moore plays Telly Paretta, a woman consumed by grief after the death of her son Sam in a plane crash fourteen months earlier. She spends hours each day looking though photo albums and watching home video tapes, against the advice of her husband Jim and psychiatrist Dr. Munce who both want her to move on and embrace life again. One day Telly finds that her precious photo albums are blank and her tapes have been wiped. Enraged that Jim has taken it upon himself to erase all memories of their son, she confronts him, only for him to tell her that they never actually had a son. Dr. Munce confirms this, saying that Telly has fabricated all of her memories of Sam because she couldn't cope with the fact that her own child was stillborn.
          
          Of course, Telly is left reeling by this revelation and runs away, determined to prove that she's not crazy. She eventually finds an ally in Ash Correll (played by Dominic West) who also remembers the plane crash that killed his daughter Lauren. How can they both be imagining it? Soon they're being chased by shady NSA types, the police and a mysterious man that Telly recognises from the airport where she last saw her son alive. Even kindly Dr. Munce's motives are called into question, as Telly and Ash realise that something much more sinister and far-reaching is going on than they first thought.
          
          The film has elements of a thriller, a psychological drama, and another genre that I won't mention so as not to spoil the surprise (if surprise is the right word). The film is entertaining enough, although not always for the right reasons. You might want to watch until the end just to find out how on earth the film-makers plan to resolve the ridiculous plot. The acting is fine, but there's a real sense of a talented cast being scandalously wasted in a film that just doesn't deliver on the promising set-up.