Perhaps the greatest flaw of every genre film is the very fact that it is a genre film. And as long as a film is labeled as a genre film, people are often not willing to see it as more than that, and if it doesn't satisfy the people's expectations of a genre film (too predictable, too overdone), it will often be overlooked by even the most eloquent and perceptive critics and reviewers.
I am not unfortunate in the sense that I went into the movie knowing fully well what the movie is about and how its twists are going to go, and so from the trailer itself I have absolutely no expectations of being shocked or surprised. Sure, The Forgotten is a shameless rip-off of countless X-Files episodes, sure it is B-grade and cheesy, but it wears its heart on its sleeve and makes no pretensions about it. It does not try to be original or clever, and that's precisely what works for me. That is probably why I hate The Sixth Sense so much. Okay, so it is clever and the twist is shocking, but other than that gimmicky manipulative ending the film is devoid of any content at all. Zilch. In this way The Forgotten is similar to the best of the X-Files episodes for me, which are not the ones which are exceedingly smart or shocking, but rather the ones which focus more on the exploration of its characters.
In this sense, free of all its genre trappings, it has an ability to shine through as a tale of love and paranoia. For one, the fact that all that matters for Julianne Moore, even after going through all the various forms of alienation, is a simple drive -- to find her son back -- differentiates it from the shallow Hollywood crap that is pounded in molds everyday. She is forgotten by even her husband, yet the only important thing is the very realistic bond between her child and herself, insofar making the movie a simplistic quest of finding her child back. It moves me most that the film is driven by such a humane sentiment.
Much has been said about the cheesy acting. Apart from Julianne Moore, all of the actors perform in a classic B-grade cheesy horror movie way. So what is there to blame? It takes a bigger person (in this case, film) to be able to be fully aware of its errors and poke fun at them. But if looking at it another way, all this bad-acting might well be explainable.
From the beginning of the movie, we are given a sense that this woman is severely unstable and paranoiac. She has never once had concrete proof of the conspiracy and what is presented to us is often her point of view. So what makes us believe so whole-heartedly that she is leading us on a government conspiracy track? Come to think of it, the entire plot about alien abduction seem extremely ludicrous for a film that started out as a psycho-drama. Furthermore the character Dominic West plays is never shown talking to the same person in the same scene as Julianne Moore, and seeing how unstable Julianne Moore seems to be from the start (she imagines drinking a coffee that wasn't there), it might be possible that she embellished these characters, and even invented the government conspiracy plot. The most telling (and hilarious) sign for this, is after Dominic West calls the cops, and after Julianne Moore gets taken in by the police (and that was when all the ridiculous things started, when she got taken over by the NSA, whose motives she didn't question), he experiences a flashback sort of thing with an extremely slapstick expression that is reminiscent of an ape who had glue stuck on its face.
If taken in this respect, the movie does not become merely become a search for her missing child, it becomes a ride into an unstable character's mind, that makes the ending more chilling. Julianne Moore's kid is strange. Not strange in the odd-cute way, but in a crazy-psycho-something's-controlling-my-brain way. His over-exaggerated winks and jerks of the head and smiles (often so many of these in one single scene) are so fake and smack of artificial warmth, that it is not difficult to believe it is an embellishment of some sort on Julianne Moore's part (remember that she admitted to embellishing some of her memories in the beginning). If this is so then all the clues and details picked up in the film will be false, and which would again prove how unreal the film's 'plot' is.
The film ends with an incredible encounter with an alien (made even stupider with the bursting of glass, and the forcing to forget memories part), which suddenly and inexplicably ends with Julianne Moore finding her son again in the park. But looking at the way it is shot, the film grain and the yellow-tinged cinematography, and her son's weird winks and ticks, and the sudden way that he appears, it is not unlike her flashbacks (or hallucinations). It is not unreasonable (in the world of celluloid) when a mentally unstable person thinks of a scary situation (in this case, the entire plot of the film, including her being forgotten, and the aliens and the government) to distract herself from a bigger and scarier situation (the fact that her son is actually already dead), and that is what probably draws me most to this movie. Could it be possible that Julianne Moore, in order to convince herself that her son is still alive, makes up the entire plot about being hunted by government agents, being embroiled in a government conspiracy, encountering a scary alien, so that in the end it can lead to a conclusion where she finds her son again, alive? I don't know for sure, but I find it an interesting postulation that grounds the film's psychological undercurrents.
I am not unfortunate in the sense that I went into the movie knowing fully well what the movie is about and how its twists are going to go, and so from the trailer itself I have absolutely no expectations of being shocked or surprised. Sure, The Forgotten is a shameless rip-off of countless X-Files episodes, sure it is B-grade and cheesy, but it wears its heart on its sleeve and makes no pretensions about it. It does not try to be original or clever, and that's precisely what works for me. That is probably why I hate The Sixth Sense so much. Okay, so it is clever and the twist is shocking, but other than that gimmicky manipulative ending the film is devoid of any content at all. Zilch. In this way The Forgotten is similar to the best of the X-Files episodes for me, which are not the ones which are exceedingly smart or shocking, but rather the ones which focus more on the exploration of its characters.
In this sense, free of all its genre trappings, it has an ability to shine through as a tale of love and paranoia. For one, the fact that all that matters for Julianne Moore, even after going through all the various forms of alienation, is a simple drive -- to find her son back -- differentiates it from the shallow Hollywood crap that is pounded in molds everyday. She is forgotten by even her husband, yet the only important thing is the very realistic bond between her child and herself, insofar making the movie a simplistic quest of finding her child back. It moves me most that the film is driven by such a humane sentiment.
Much has been said about the cheesy acting. Apart from Julianne Moore, all of the actors perform in a classic B-grade cheesy horror movie way. So what is there to blame? It takes a bigger person (in this case, film) to be able to be fully aware of its errors and poke fun at them. But if looking at it another way, all this bad-acting might well be explainable.
From the beginning of the movie, we are given a sense that this woman is severely unstable and paranoiac. She has never once had concrete proof of the conspiracy and what is presented to us is often her point of view. So what makes us believe so whole-heartedly that she is leading us on a government conspiracy track? Come to think of it, the entire plot about alien abduction seem extremely ludicrous for a film that started out as a psycho-drama. Furthermore the character Dominic West plays is never shown talking to the same person in the same scene as Julianne Moore, and seeing how unstable Julianne Moore seems to be from the start (she imagines drinking a coffee that wasn't there), it might be possible that she embellished these characters, and even invented the government conspiracy plot. The most telling (and hilarious) sign for this, is after Dominic West calls the cops, and after Julianne Moore gets taken in by the police (and that was when all the ridiculous things started, when she got taken over by the NSA, whose motives she didn't question), he experiences a flashback sort of thing with an extremely slapstick expression that is reminiscent of an ape who had glue stuck on its face.
If taken in this respect, the movie does not become merely become a search for her missing child, it becomes a ride into an unstable character's mind, that makes the ending more chilling. Julianne Moore's kid is strange. Not strange in the odd-cute way, but in a crazy-psycho-something's-controlling-my-brain way. His over-exaggerated winks and jerks of the head and smiles (often so many of these in one single scene) are so fake and smack of artificial warmth, that it is not difficult to believe it is an embellishment of some sort on Julianne Moore's part (remember that she admitted to embellishing some of her memories in the beginning). If this is so then all the clues and details picked up in the film will be false, and which would again prove how unreal the film's 'plot' is.
The film ends with an incredible encounter with an alien (made even stupider with the bursting of glass, and the forcing to forget memories part), which suddenly and inexplicably ends with Julianne Moore finding her son again in the park. But looking at the way it is shot, the film grain and the yellow-tinged cinematography, and her son's weird winks and ticks, and the sudden way that he appears, it is not unlike her flashbacks (or hallucinations). It is not unreasonable (in the world of celluloid) when a mentally unstable person thinks of a scary situation (in this case, the entire plot of the film, including her being forgotten, and the aliens and the government) to distract herself from a bigger and scarier situation (the fact that her son is actually already dead), and that is what probably draws me most to this movie. Could it be possible that Julianne Moore, in order to convince herself that her son is still alive, makes up the entire plot about being hunted by government agents, being embroiled in a government conspiracy, encountering a scary alien, so that in the end it can lead to a conclusion where she finds her son again, alive? I don't know for sure, but I find it an interesting postulation that grounds the film's psychological undercurrents.