Review
GODSEND
Starring Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Robert De Niro
Directed by Nick Hamm
Opens Friday April 30
Check listings
While by no means the formula for greatness, Godsend certainly has ingredients that could make for an above-average horror flick: lessons on the dangers of playing God, visions of dead people, chilling nightmares and Robert De Niro. Instead, Godsend features a lacklustre script filled with trite dialogue, a weak and clichéd plot and Robert De Niro’s worst performance since Analyze This.
In the film, Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos play Paul and Jesse Duncan, a couple mourning the death of their son Adam (Cameron Bright). They are soon approached by brilliant stem cell researcher Richard Wells (Robert De Niro), who provides a problematic but ultimately tempting offer – clone an exact replica of Adam.
After a trying few minutes of moral debate, they accept, and following an overly simplistic cloning sequence, their son is reborn. The movie fast forwards to Adam’s eighth birthday (just past when his first incarnation died), and things start to go wrong. Adam is haunted by nightmares and visions, and possessed by violent urges.
This transformation, displayed in haunting dream sequences and eerie visions, makes for some genuinely frightening and heart-stopping moments. Unfortunately, this is the only area where the movie succeeds, and a few scenes of terror can’t make up for two hours of boredom.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the newest film from lightweight director Nick Hamm (The Hole) is that he seems terribly confused about what sort of film it is. It quickly moves from heart-wrenching drama (with Paul and Jesse dealing, however convincingly, with the loss of their son) into an ethical debate (as Paul, a truly principled man, battles with the morality of cloning), and finally makes it way into the realm of horror. What’s worse, none of these genres is given enough time to develop, resulting in a scattered and underdeveloped plot.
Beyond this, the script is tired and clichéd. While Adam’s death is largely glossed over, what we do see of Paul and Jesse’s pain is superficial and forced. Even throughout the rest of the movie, with the couple still dealing with the fate of their son, the dialogue falls flat. Kinnear and Romijn-Stamos give surprisingly competent performances, but are bogged down by a sub-par script.
De Niro is the worst of them. He seems woefully bored as soon as he appears on screen and his performance never recovers. This may be due to what De Niro was working with, but it seems like he didn’t even try.
In the end, there’s a twist, as all good horror films have. While it aims to tie up a tangled mess of loose ends and red herrings brought forward earlier, the conflicts and problems are never fully resolved. Of course, movies don’t necessarily need tidy conclusions – horror films especially – but it feels like someone just ran out of ideas. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.