| Cover Art |
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| Credits |
Director: Nick Hamm
Starring: Greg Kinnear,
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Robert De Niro, Cameron
Bright
Screenplay: Mark Bomback
Country: USA |
Why oh why does Robert De Niro keep appearing
in films like Godsend? His performances
in Taxi Driver, Raging
Bull, Goodfellas and Once
Upon a Time in America are the stuff of
legend but recently he seems happy to waste his
talents with rubbish like Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Yes, he's great in Meet the Fockers but that's a rare occurrence these days.
We've seen the story a million times before;
Paul and Jessie Duncan's Idyllic family
life is shattered when their small child Adam
is killed in a freak car accident. Distraught
with sadness they meet a strange doctor from the
Godsend Institute who offers them a way out; Cloning.
Problem is the process isn't quite up to
scratch and the cherubic son's clone is
soon giving Damien the Anti-Christ a run for his
devilish money.
As Adam mark two grows older he begins to have
nightmares where he sees himself burning down
a school. These visions get more vivid as Adams
behaviour gets stranger and stranger. His parents
begin to think that maybe his past life is revisiting
his new one but soon realise that a boy named
Zachary possesses their son, a boy who had burnt
his classmates to death. But how did this happen?
Only Dr Wells has the answer.
The performances are typical for a major studio
stab at a horror film. Rebecca Romijn Stamos of X- Men and Femme Fatale fame is fine as Jessie but Greg Kinnear and De-
Niro are wasted as Paul and Dr. Wells. Kinnear
tries hard but De Niro appears to be sleepwalking.
Cameron Bright playing Adam gives the best performance
in the film.
The film uses every cliché in the book;
the disused shed straight from Crystal Lake (complete
with rusty axes hanging on the walls), flash backs,
dead people in the bath scenes, creepy children
in school corridors. Director Hamm tries hard
to lend his film some gravitas but unfortunately
the symbolism comes across as ham-fisted and heavy
handed.
The film's denouement, as we flashback
to the Zachery's life with Adam's
demented nanny and the death of his mother is
frankly ridiculous and extremely predictable for
anyone who has managed to stay awake. No attempt
is made to make De Niro's Dr Wells anything
other than utterly evil so his attempts at playing
God with others peoples DNA comes as no surprise. |
