The Forgotten: Critic Reviews

There's no excuse for a big budget Hollywood production having as many holes and loose ends as this one.

It's enigmatic in the worst sense, in that every explanation for what's going on holds less water than the last.

A pseudospiritual, mumbo-jumbo, science-fiction inflected mess.

An uneasy mix between Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the The X-Files, and one not nearly as smart as either.

Slightly predictable and dumb when all is said and done.

Maybe you'll kick yourself upon leaving the theater, but while the lights are down you're engaged and increasingly, pleasurably thunderstruck.

Car chases, special-effects jolts, and a socially irrelevant sci-fi story line lifted whole from The X-Files.

It has been 17 years since Joseph Ruben last directed a good thriller (The Stepfather), and it may be another 17 if he can't find better material than Gerald Di Pego's script for The Forgotten.

It's amazing the acting talent assembled for this mess.

One-half a good movie. The second half goes wildly out-of-control, leaving the entire film in self-destructive mode.

We get all of Moore, which is a lot, but only half a story, which is not quite enough to make The Forgotten a winning thriller.

The movie begins with a premise: A mother remembers her lost son, and everyone she trusts tells her she only imagines she had a son. That's a great story idea. But it's all downhill from there.

An often gripping, puzzling and scary trip through Manhattan, remote Long Island beaches and mountain cabin getaways.

Ruben's film is more like The Sixth Nonsense.

The warped yardstick by which this year's stinkers will be measured.

A surprisingly action-packed wingding of a flick, a snappy Twilight Zone episode blown satisfyingly large beyond expectations.

Now we find out what The X-Files would be like without Mulder and Scully. And it's not good.

Moore is too precious a commodity to fritter away her time and talent on a no-thrills thriller as bland and superficial as The Forgotten.

Perhaps wisely leaves more questions than it answers and for the most part manages to maintain its suspense.

Devolves into a best-forgotten clone of an utterly illogical X-Files episode.

You could wind up with whiplash watching this film, and that's a compliment.

It's the central casting of the remarkable Julianne Moore that gives the movie both a core and a heart, particularly when Di Pego's script starts making its way further and further out along the limb of credibility.

There is nothing worse than a thriller that doesn't play fair.

Has shocks and a solid performance, but no intelligence to go with them.