The Forgotten

Year: 2004 Rating: PG-13 Overall Evaluation: 6.5 Significance Suppositions Story Style 7.0 / 10 4.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 9.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated PG-13 for intense thematic material, some violence and brief language. Nothing gratuitous.

Story

This X-Files-esque motion picture relates the story of a woman who is struggling with the loss of her son in an airplane accident a year or so earlier. She begins to notice that pictures of the boy and other memorabilia are disappearing and eventually no one, not even her husband, even remembers the boy's existence. In fact, they flat deny she ever had a son. This leads her on a quest to figure out whether or not she is crazy and in so doing . . .

[SPOILER WARNING!]

. . . she discovers another person with the same problem. As it turns out aliens had kidnapped their kids in order to perform a memory experiment on them. For some reason she was the only one who could not have her memory erased. In the theater version the alien in charge gets recalled for his failure with her and everyone gets their kids back (minus all memory of their loss of course). In the director's cut (which I have not seen) apparently the experiment is completed and then everyone returns to normal. Or something.

Suppositions

[Some unmarked spoilers are present in the next sections due to necessity.]

For a quasi-sci-fi film the suppositions are not bad. However, several issues are brought forward that are problematic. First is the whole alien thing of course. Second, the ability to erase a lifetime of memories without damage to the mind is highly questionable. Third, there are several phenomena going on that make little sense (like the flying into the air things that magically do no harm whatsoever to the person). It all just kind of does not make sense if taken at all seriously.

Significance

The basic message is fine - love can't be conquered (well, at least the hero's). Fight for your kids . . . etc. The problem is the overall fatalism of the film. Humans end up being helpless lab rats for alien scientists and basically can only whine about it. Granted, if the presuppositions are given then that would pretty much be the way it was - but it did not have to be so pessimistic. Humanity would not stand for this but of course no one remembers any of it . . . again with the "we can't really know reality so just try to make the best of things" mentality. Yawn.