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Forgotten (The)
R2 - United Kingdom - Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Mathew Buck (23rd March 2005). |
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The Film
 Julianne Moore is a good actress - she just needs to sack her agent. After trying to act between violent bouts of cannibalism in Hannibal, she finds herself once again in a real dud. Both of these films have a common trait - they waste their premise. OK, I'm gonna keep this synopsis short so I can reduce the amount of spoilers. Telly (Moore) has lost her child, Sam, 14 months ago in a plane crash and is taking therapy with Dr. Munce (Gary Sinse) to get over him, But she can't. Everyday, she finds herself standing at the dresser looking at Sam's stuff, photos of Sam and videos of Sam. Then one morning, she finds the photo book blank and the videos blank. She then discovers that she never had a son and she's made it up. Determined to prove she's had a son, she runs away. And so her adventure begins. That may not seem brief but that's just the first 15 minutes. All of that is condensed in the amount of time for you to read this review. That's the problem with this film - it never gives us time to get to know any of the characters. Telly is developed in 3 minutes before we get to the meat. Anyone else is severely under-developed. I suppose this is the screenwriter's compensating for the fact that characters continually appear and disappear as they please. It is claimed the Revolution Studios bought the script almost immediately - they probably should have waited for a re-draft. The film only runs for 87 minutes. I feel that the film should have ran ten minutes longer, with more character development so that we can get to know the supporting cast. SPOILERS AHEAD! This talks about the premise and may ruin the "surprise" of the storyline. The premise is not only very interesting and very original - if taken in the right direction. Sadly, it hasn't. The film teases early on that Telly could be suffering from delusions created by herself. This concept would have led to a very clever and thoughtful psychological drama. Instead, we get taken down the road that has been done many times before (and better). Anyone who has watched a few X-Files episodes in their life knows what's coming from miles away. Aliens are not a new and interesting concept. There are few surprises, but not shocking. They give away very early it aliens doing this. The way characters talk about how only aliens can do something this big. The guy who walks like a Terminator. The fact Telly looks up and there's a bloody great UFO in the sky. And when it gets to revealing the alien plot, it just gets plain silly. The ending is also stupid. So Julianne defeats one alien and everything goes back to normal. Typical Hollywood ending. What happened to the aliens? Did they just go? The film has a icy blue tone in the main story and a bright golden tone in the flashback scenes. Nice touch, and despite the colour tone differences being quite radical. Music is typical horror - not intrusive until those shock moments. The Forgotten is a disappointment. It is saved by Julianne Moore doing a stellar effort to keep the film afloat, but sadly it's more of a film I'd like to forget myself.
Video
The Forgotten is presented in 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. As mentioned above, the film has a visually strong palette, and the disc shows them off just fine. No low level noise was detected. Aliasing was isolated to a few moments. No colour bleed was spotted, even in the flashback scenes. Subtitles are presented in various languages, including English, Spanish and Dutch.
Audio
There are two DD5.1 dubs on this disc, but I went for the original English DD 5.1 track. Being a thriller, there are quite a few surround moments with the subwoofer taking advantage of the sound effects used for these shock scenes. The dialogue was always audible. There is an Audio Descriptive as well, which is nice, because I like to see distributors getting in Buena Vista's fine act towards the blind on their films.
Extras
We get an Audio Commentary with director Joseph Ruben and writer Gerald Dipego. They seem surprisingly happy with the work they've done and the reviews don't seem to have got to them. Ruben seems to spot boom mics that obviously have been removed or cropped out. The commentary is a little dry and barely covers much more than the script and the odd bit on location scouting. "Remembering The Forgotten" is a very good look back featurette which covers much more ground than the commentary, as well as being shorter and more interesting. Which is less than can be said for the "Making Of" which is a 20 minute EPK piece. It's slightly better than the usual garbage of this sort, but not exactly groundbreaking. There are 3 Deleted Scenes, which have little of interest, except a much better Aternate Ending, which implies they are going to keep on with the experiments. Finally we have the well edited trailer for the main feature as well as bonus ones for Hellboy, Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Frankenfish. All trailers are 16x9 expect Frankenfish. What kind of title is Frankenfish anyway?
Overall
Julianne Moore must read more than the plot synopsis for her potential films otherwise she's gonna churn out more waste than a nuclear power plant. The film is well presented on an average disc by Sony.
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