Godsend

What can I say about Godsend that hasn't already been said? Probably not much. It was just so...blah. I'm convinced that there could have been a good movie here. I mean Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn, and Robert Deniro! Come on! This should have been a much better film. The premise was good: a couple lose their only son and are given a chance to bring him back through the possibly amoral process of cloning. If they would have listened to Jud Crandall they would have realized that "sometimes dead is better." It was just terribly hard to sit through and the ending was really lame. I have to blame the writer. You know why? Because there are 4 alternate endings on the DVD and they all suck too. Either he just didn't know how to end it or perhaps the studio wasn't pleased. Either way, it's completely avoidable.

This film to me was pretty good. The performances were strong, it had enough jumpy parts to have me screaming, and the plot was surprising. This is one of the few horror movies I've seen lately that, instead of slashing and slicing its way through a pointless gore fest (which are fun by the way, just not great movies), is one that you may actually still be talking about by next week.

Starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Greg Kinnear, and Robert DeNiro, Godsend is the chilling thriller about cloning. Jessie (Stamos) and Paul (Kinnear) Duncan are a happily married couple with an 8 year old son. One day their son is tragically killed when he is hit by a car. The devastated couple are then approached by Dr. Richard Wells (DeNiro), who claims he can help them by cloning to make an exact copy of their late son. Months later the Duncans are a family again with their new baby. Everything is going fine- until Adam reaches his 8th birthday, the time when the original Adam was killed. Suddenly it is a race to help their son while trying to survive before it's too late.

This gripping thriller is a fun yet interesting film to watch with your friends. I thought it was overall a good movie with a great cast.

*** out of 4

While not the worst movie I've seen, it ranks up there. The plot was very thin and it was not very scary (although there was one surprising twist). The horror elements were very predictable. I suppose I may have been disappointed because I was expecting something more intellectual and instead I watched something akin to _Child's Play_. (A trailer was shown for _Seed of Chucky_.)

Often during the course of the movie, the music would creshendo as if something very scary was about to happen, then the visual would disappoint (especially in the "flashback" scenes).

Although the movie was only 1 hour and 40 minutes long, it seemed to drag on at the end. The ending was bland and uninteresting.

Paul and Jessie Duncan live in a rough part of the city but are happy with their lives and their young son Adam. However tragedy strikes when Adam is killed in a car accident right in front of Jessie, leaving the couple broken and lost. At their lowest point they are met by a former tutor of Jessie's, enigmatic doctor Richard Wells. Infamous for this genetic work, Wells claims that he can use DNA from the dead Adam to essentially produce a clone. With Jessie no longer able to have children, the couple agree to the illegal and experimental procedure (which also involves moving to a big empty house) and the new born is soon with them. All is great until Adam reaches eight years old and suddenly the nightmares starts and Adam's behaviour changes.

A few years ago cloning became a hot topic and produced several interesting debates over the moral and ethical issues surrounding it. There were no easy answers and it was/is a topic that is hard to hold a clear view on unless you happen to have it decided for you by your religion. Writer Bomback takes this interesting hotbed of ethical debate and churns out a modern twist on the Omen with few original ideas and nothing of any real interest. The plot just tries to engineer plenty of "creepy" moments with the thinnest of ideas behind them and, as a result I didn't really care that much about any of it. Hamm's solid direction is OK but he can't add much in the way of real chills.

Kinnear and Romijn make for an unlikely couple and they don't have a very convincing relationship. Neither of them have much to work with; they do the basics with the script but they can't raise it and don't even suggest that they would produce the sort of emotions you'd expect from a couple seeing their dead son recreated in front of them. Bright is suitably creepy and he does what is asked of him – the rest isn't his fault. De Niro phones in his performance; he isn't terrible but you can't help feel that he is worth more than this and that he surely can't need the money that much.

Overall then a roundly poor chiller that offers very little other than unimaginative and unoriginal ideas. Not chilling in the least and it just plods its way towards a pointless and annoying conclusion.

The teacher Pauld Duncan (Greg Kinnear), the photographer Jessie Duncan (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) and their eight years old son Adam Duncan (Cameron Bright) composes a simple but very happy medium class family. On the day after his eighth birthday, Adam is hit and killed by a car, shaking the stability of the Duncan's family. Some days later, a mysterious doctor Richard Wells (Robert De Niro) approaches to the couple and proposes to make a clone of their deceased son. A new Adam is born, but after his eighth birthday, the boy has horrible nightmares and a weird behavior at school. The reproduction process hides a deep secret, which affects the life of the Duncans. "Godsend" was a great deception for me, since I expected much more from this film. The first three quarters have some flaws, but is scary and hooks the attention of the viewer. However, the conclusion of the story is horrible! I believe that even the director Nick Hamm was not satisfied with the end of the movie, since the American DVD presents four (4) alternative endings, which one of them worse than the original commercial and moralist one. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Enviado" ("The Envoy")