The Forgotten

This movie seemingly had an interesting concept: everyone a woman (Telly) knows has forgotten her son except her and thinks she is crazy and making him up. I didn't like the movie. The movie begins with her talking to her psychologist about her son who died in a plane crash fourteen months prior. In the following scenes, she is led to believe she is forgetting things, like where she parked her car and whether or not she'd been having coffee while speaking to the psychologist. When she got home, she found that books which presumably had pictures of her son were empty and video tapes which had footage of him were also blank. She blamed the husband, thinking he was trying to force her get over the loss of their son. The husband claimed they'd had no son and later her psychologist came over and told her the same. She ran away, came back later and spoke with their neighbor who'd taken care of her son a couple times. The woman told Telly she didn't know what she was talking about.

Telly ran away to the apartment of a man (Ash) whom she had spoken with earlier on a swing set. She mentioned to him how her son and his daughter were friends and that they had died in a plane crash on the way to camp. I have never heard of kids going somewhere on an airplane without their parents, and certainly not for camp. Ash said he didn't have a daughter. She showed him the room which had been his daughter's, to find that it was now a room for his hockey stuff. He thought she was out of her mind, but I guess since he was drunk, maybe he figured he wasn't thinking clearly so he told her they would have to talk about it the next day and allowed her to stay. She went back in the room while he slept and noticed blue paint behind a tear in what looked like some fabric wallpaper. She picked at it and pulled away the wallpaper to find blue walls covered with a child's drawings. The next day she showed him the walls and told him his daughter had drawn them. He told her they were there from previous tenants before he moved in and said he was going to call the cops to have her to escorted out. She said she would leave if he just said his daughter's name, Lauren. He did and then told her he would need a minute. She went in another room and he came and told her that he had called the cops because she needed help. She was taken away by cops and outside they met with the NSA, who took her. Ash went back to the blue room and found he was able to visualize seeing his daughter drawing on the walls and doing other things in there. He ran down to get Telly released because he realized she wasn't crazy. He told the NSA to let her go, but they refused and when he tried to talk to her, the men were fighting him off. Ash told Telly that he remembered and he broke the driver's window, unlocked the doors and told her to run. Not handcuffed, she made a break for it and one of the two NSA men followed her. She quickly managed to lose him. I kept wondering how the movie would end until Telly saw something in the sky. It was a giant ring of technical nothing, indicating that there were aliens. I was upset to say the least. I don't watch movies that I know involve: aliens, vampires and some other things I can't think of right now. Because they are stupid. Always.

Telly and Ash joined forces to find out why everyone forgot their children. She told Ash that she suspected it had something to do with aliens. Because of something someone said, they realized their children might be alive. They set out to find out if their children actually were alive. They hit a man with a car because he wouldn't get out of their way and the NSA was after them. At one point, Telly went to speak with her husband. He didn't recognize her. She tried to get him to remember by telling him to say "Sam," their son's name, since Ash suggested she try that since it worked out for him. "You lost me," he said, and walked away. Later, Ash left the motel they had been staying in in the middle of the night to capture some man. He knocked him out with a fireplace poker from the fireplace in the motel, tied him up tried to get him to tell them what happened with their kids. The guy being questioned told them they were going to make things worse. Telly told him to tell them where their kids were and promised that no one would know he did, to which he responded, "They're listening." Moments later the top of the motel blew off and the man disappeared.

They found out where the guy they'd questioned lived and it had furniture covered with clear bags. "It looks like whoever lived here left, but didn't move out." There were a couple of failed attempts at being profound. They spent the night in the stranger's house, which was really weird. The next morning they tried to get out of the house, but the doors wouldn't open. Ash broke a giant window and they left. A female cop who'd been interested in Telly's case arrived in an unmarked cop car at the house just as Telly and Ash got out. The cop was there with Telly's psychologist, who earlier had insisted on helping her find Telly because he "believed Telly's story." Ash gave Telly his car keys and told her to leave, saying, "someone had to get out of there." The cop pursued the man who got hit by the car that was walking on the porch. She told him to stop and said that she'd shoot if he went further. He didn't stop and she shot him. He kept going and she shot him two other times. He kept moving, not phased. The cop then went to Telly, who was by Ash's car, and told her that she believed her. The cop was then sucked up into the sky. The psychiatrist told Telly to go with him in the cop car.

Telly insisted, for some reason, that he take her to the airport where she last saw her son. He told her he was going to take her to the police or something because they would be able to help her. They reached a stop light, and, from the passenger's seat, she put the car in park, removed the keys and told him to get out of the car. He told her he would take her to the airport. When they arrived, they went into the abandoned building and found the man who Ash hit with the car waiting inside. The psychiatrist told the man they (the aliens) should just end it because it had gone too far. The other man said it wasn't over yet and walked away, further into the empty building. The psychiatrist turned to Telly, who asked how he was involved. Basically, he told her that the aliens got help one way or another and that cooperation was the easiest way. He told her to let it go or something and she said that she wouldn't, since the man said it wasn't over, which probably meant she could get her son back.

She went after the other man and spoke with him. He told her that everyone else in the experiment had forgotten about their children (which would never happen). He said that they could measure the love or something that mothers had for their children and that they didn't understand it. He talked more about it with her and she kept asking where her son was. He told her things would be "much easier" if she would just forget. With a morphed face, he yelled, "You need to forget!" so loudly that he broke all the windows in the building and Telly fell to the ground. It was so cheesy. He then asked her to think back to the first moment she saw her son. When she did, he took the memory and then asked her what the name of the boy was. She asked, "What boy?" The alien walked away. She was still lying on the ground when she remembered her pregnancy. Then she said,"I had life inside me. I had life inside me. I have a child. I have a son. His name is Sam, you son of a b----." Chee-sy. He yelled, "I need more time!" before being sucked up into the sky.

Telly went home and yelled "Sam!" throughout the house. He wasn't there. She went to the park which was apparently next to her house. She continued yelling his name at the park. She asked a boy if he knew a Sam Whatevertheirlastnamewas and he shook his head. A boy yelled, "Hey, mom!" It was Sam. She went to hug him and then let him play some more. On the swing set, she saw Ash, who earlier had been sucked into space at one point. She spoke to him as though they were practically strangers (which they were before what they'd been through, since their kids weren't even really close friends), I guess because she figured he wouldn't remember. I'm assuming he didn't since Lauren, who was also back, and Sam clearly didn't. To Telly, Ash said, "I think we've met before." That was the end.