Godsend

Written by Tom Clare in Film Reviews, Tuesday 24 February, 2009

Released: 2004
Genre: Thriller
Certificate: 15
Country: US
Director: Nick Hamm
Format: DVD

Godsend offers up a forgettable slice of psychological-thriller action which, despite fielding a decent cast that includes Robert De Niro and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, is cut-down by an overly far-fetched storyline and a conspicuous lack of scares and inventiveness.

When eight year-old Adam Duncan is run over and killed shortly after his eighth birthday, his parents (played by Greg Kinnear and Romijn) are understandably rather aggrieved. In steps Dr. Richard Wells (De Niro) to suggest the brilliant though rather illegal practice of using clone cells to allow the mother to give birth to the same child. Signal more anguish and soul-searching followed by the inevitable acceptance from the desperate parents.

Thus Adam’s life begins anew and the action fast-forwards again to the second version of the boy as he turns eight. On cue, he starts a process that might sound a tad familiar to modern psychological thriller fans – unnerving visions; vivid nightmares and the development of an increasingly sinister doppelganger, whom he refers to as Zachary. As Dr. Wells speculates, it is hard to predict what’s going to happen as he passes the age at which he originally died. And yes, that section sounds even dodgier on film.

The creepy child mechanic in such a film is hardly a new concept and something that has been perfected most notably in modern Japanese horror, and all of the above ‘symptoms’ that Adam suffers from aren’t the most original. Still, the distinctly rickety ‘science giving birth to evil’ angle could perhaps have been forgiven if the film had offered up more scares, but in this department it fails almost entirely.

The child’s ‘evil’ spells lack menace – his parents are mostly able to snap him out of these episodes by the repeated calling his name, whilst the occurrence of laughing twin girls; prophetic drawings of burning buildings and a conveniently placed abandoned shack in the woods are just a few examples of the films painful clichés, all of which have been tackled with greater aplomb elsewhere. From a technical standpoint there’s little wrong with the film, with eerie stabs of music and voyeuristic camera angles ticking the right boxes; it’s just that it hints at rather more than it ever delivers – something as a viewer you’ll probably have sussed well before the end. It says it all that the scene that made me jump the most was one in which a woman suddenly raps on a car window.

Whilst the running-time is far from excessive at a little over an hour and a half, Godsend still feels laboured, especially in the first half – little is done to justify the leap of faith required to believe the effects on Adam, and instead the viewer is treated to much over-sentimentality on the part of his parents, as Romijn and Kinnear contribute run-of the-mill showings with what is, for large periods, superfluous dialogue. Even the typically assured competence of a big player like De Niro is wasted in the end due to his character (and everyone else’s for that matter) being so uninteresting.

Through this lack of character development it becomes difficult to empathise with anyone in the closing scenes, and this frustrating lack of progression is summed up in the unsatisfying conclusion that lacks bite and highlights a peculiar disregard for the revelations the previous half-hour had brought to life. Tellingly, four other endings were filmed (available as extras on the DVD), one of which was better than the actual conclusion due to its greater pace and fast-cuts adding some much-needed excitement into the mix. However, if these extras prove anything, it’s that the filmmakers were left too much to do in the closing stages – piecing together and tieing up the not-inconsiderable baggage of the story whilst also creating a finale with impetus proved illusive.

It’s watchable, but considering it has a cast of notable pedigree and decent cinematography, it’s disappointing how little atmosphere is created and how heavily modern genre conventions are leaned upon – Godsend just needed a spark of invention, but without it, it’s just ordinary.
 

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