The Forgotten

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Man, I am seeing many rips on the movie, from websites to critics...which I think is outweighing the positive views at this moment.

People are so...fickle, what gives?

IMO, most professional paid reviewers are the types of twits who cannot fill in the blanks of genre movies. They need to be hit over the head with an info dump that lays it all out. The thing is with this movie (I mostly liked it, btw) was that the characters were in the dark about so much, and were themselves wondering why certain unexplainable things were going on.

I liked this touch.

One thing I did have a problem with though, was

Spoiler

that there was no closure with her husband. Not even a little bit. Myself, I would have been pleased if we saw the husband on the swingset with the hockey player dude.

The movie left enough bits of info that a reasonably informed genre fan could put pieces together and come up with solutions to things left not fully explained. Thing is, I am starting to want movies to not explain everything, but to still leave it open that the facts could assembled with not much effort by the viewer in the viewer's own time.


Regards,
Eric Anondson

 

[Merlion]

I just heard a reviewer on the radio describe it as very silly, badly written, poorly acted

But...thats how critics describe most fantasy/sci-fi/horror movies, so it no longer really means much to me.

 

[Truth Seeker]

It is making decent money...picture 1, critics 0.

 

[Gunslinger]

I absolutely hated it. I walked out wishing I had just thrown my $10 at a bum or something instead of wasting it watching this movie.

Spoiler

I had no idea it was about aliens when I bought my ticket. Nothing in the trailer I saw suggested that, and so when they introduced the aliens I was completely dissappointed. I was expecting some of government conspiriacy, or something, anything more original than "aliens did it." They do suck people out into space, but isn't nearly as cool as it sounds. Rather, it seems like they use it whenever a character needs to be removed, and they can't be bothered to come up with a more interesting way to do it. And the supposedly "scary" parts weren't scary at all. I sort-of jumped the first time (the car...), but all the other instances were so incredibly predictable that I not only had a few seconds to ready myself, but I'm sure I would have had enough time to warn people in the theater around me that something was about to jump out or try to scare you, had I wanted to.

 

[Captain Tagon]

I liked it. Decent film. Nothing really spectacular but a fun night out with the friends. Catch a matinee or if you can get a student discount.

 

[Crothian]

Good, Spoilers. So, do they ever discuss the how or the why of it?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Good, Spoilers. So, do they ever discuss the how or the why of it?

More or less, yes, the why is discussed swiftly near the end. The "how" is left fairly unexplained.


Regards,
Eric Anondson

 

[Crothian]

So, what is the why?

 

[Bill Scott]

Oof, the critics as a whole disagree with you. It only has a 26% positive rating on the Tomatometer, with 10 out of 39 reviews unfavorable.

Not to offend anyone personally but most of the 'WANNABE' critics over at RT would'nt know a good movie even if it came up and bit them on there butts. Wether the Forgotten is good or bad, I won't know until I rent the dvd, I'll make my own mind up rather then being programmed by a bunch of idiot critics

 

[Fast Learner]

The why:

Spoiler

Aliens have been here for a long time. They have the ability to mess with people's memories at will, and as such do all kinds of experiments and manipulate society on a daily basis. The government is "in on it," but only to the extent that they're powerless to stop the aliens so they simply try to minimize the damage to people and society.

In this case an experiment is running where the aliens take away people's children and then re-write everyone's memories to make it as though the children never exisisted. Part of what they're testing is whether the parent-child bond is so ingrained in the mind that it's difficult or impossible to completely erase.

While most parents seem to forget, our hero's memory isn't completely rewritten. She still remembers her son, and of course doesn't understand why no one else does.

An interesting part of the whole re-write process is that it seems to work not-unlike a hard disk: pointers to the data/memories are erased, so while the data/memories are still there on the drive/mind, you've effectively deleted/forgotten them because you have no access. If you can successfully rebuild the pointers then the data/memories will come flooding back.

In this case the mother-child bond of our hero is simply too deeply/widely/whatever ingrained, and no amount of messing with her head seems to erase all the pointers. Part of the reason may be that she works very hard to reinforce the memories, constantly repeating his name, reviewing things they did together, etc. She later manages to help another man "restore his pointers" and he remembers his daughter. Together they try to figure out what the hell is going on. Adventure ensues.

In a nutshell, anyway.