It is apt that The Forgotten was pretty much overlooked on its release. Not only because of its name because it is a quite ludicrous picture. The latest in a line of creepy kid based horror, The Forgotten is notable for being mentioned in every single review as an X-Files rip-off. Even this gives away too much of the plot, and is lazy, lazy journalism. Anyway, The Forgotten is nothing like The X-Files: it has a real ginger actress in it (indeed Julianne Moore is so ginger she has freckles on her back).
It does share with the X-Files a penchant for ludicrous plots which favour conspiracy over the pay-off of said conspiracy (a bit like paying the CIA to cover up a sweet shop robbery). And I suppose it is by default superior to the X-Files in as much as it is about 1/200th of the length of that convoluted project. That still does not mean you should waste your time on it, especially as it has in its genesis a really nice idea which it completely destroys.
The Forgotten, on paper I guess, is a film which is about grief. It is about losing a child, and then not wanting to forget them: not even wanting the daily feeling of aching grief go away. In the conspiracy that follows this nice, everyday idea – which nearly everyone can sympathies with – the empathy is lost in endless cryptic chases and lots of actors who look like Gary Sinise.
I have always been a wee bit suspicious of Sneezy: with the exception of his outstanding turn in Snow White & The Seven Dwarves, he usually turns in perfectly exceptionless, everyman performances. But there is a difference in being the everyman, to being EVERY MAN IN THIS FILM. This is not literally true of course: its just that Linus Roache and Dominic West do look so much like Sneezy that the casting director must have forgotten he was already in the movie. It certainly adds a slightly disconcerting air to the first half hour of the film when we are supposed to entertain the idea that Moore is deranged. Unfortunately that idea is scotched too soon, to be replaced by the idea that Moor was deranged to do the film in the first place.
The Forgotten is an excellent bad movie. Any foreshadowing of the plot by a review would spoil what few mysteries the film allows itself to have in store. Unfortunately saying “it is a bit like the X-Files” foreshadows it completely. Forgettable.