Godsend (2004)

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Aside from a modestly effective twist near the end of the movie regarding the real identity of the child "Adam," this was a bland movie pretty much the whole way through. "Adam" applies to two characters, actually. The first being the child killed in a car accident near the beginning of the movie, and the second being his "replacement." After the first Adam's death, his parents are approached by a famous doctor (played by Robert De Niro in one of his more forgettable performances) who offers to use the knowledge that he's gained through laboratory experiments to clone Adam. The result is pretty much what you'd expect in this kind of movie. The new Adam seems to have memories of his previous life and seems from the beginning just a little "off." You realize that there's more going on here than meets the eye - the figure of Zachary (the boy in Adam's dreams) really doesn't seem to connect with the story, but to me the disconnect was so great that I settled for remaining confused rather than even trying to connect Zachary with anything. The movie tries to frighten with assorted chills, but never really succeeds in that regard. The twist (as I mentioned above) is modestly effective (I hadn't seen it coming) but everything that came before was so bland that I really didn't care by the time the twist came out. The ending was too open ended - there were at least two possibilities left open for continuing the story in a sequel that just seemed too wide open. Fortunately, the sequel never came. I'd have appreciated a bit more closure to this.This is a mediocre movie at best. I always give a bit of extra credit for a twist that catches me off guard, but it's still mediocre.

Pretty dull mainstream horror/thriller about a kid who dies and gets cloned. When he reaches the same age as when he originally died, things start going wrong. At not one point this movie manages to be scary, and most avid horror fans will probably think the same of it. And what's worse: it's so predictable. Robert De Niro urgently needs to do another gangster-movie, if you ask me, and needs to stay away from dull comedies and horror/thrillers. But I'm gonna be mild. Even though I figured out the mystery and the twist near the end way before it actually happened (as well as predicting how this movie would end), I'm not gonna flunk it, simply because the acting and directing as well as the cinematography was decent and more or less saved the movie. All the rest of the film is just average and standard and you've seen it all before. I'd say: don't bother watching this movie, unless maybe someone slips a copy your way and you have 90 minutes to kill. At least it's not painful to watch or anything...

After he gets a new pair of sneakers, older-looking eight-year-old Cameron Bright (as Adam Duncan) gets hit, and killed, by a car. His devastated parents, teacher Greg Kinnear (as Paul) and photographer Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (as Jessie), receive an invitation to clone young Mr. Bright, from doctor Robert De Niro (as Richard Wells). Ms. Romijn-Stamos was once Mr. De Niro's undergraduate student. Since the cloning procedure is illegal, Mr. De Niro requests the family relocate to "Riverton"; thus, friends and neighbors won't see the duplicate Bright growing up all over again.Suddenly, it's eight years later… Sporting a different hairstyle, Romijn-Stamos has one very sexy underwear scene. But, more important to the storyline, cloned son "Adam" begins to act creepy. He gets into trouble with peers at school, and spits in the teacher's face. "Godsend" De Niro and the DVD sleeve help explain the problem: "Reaching the age at which the original Adam died, the new Adam begins to change, and a new sinister personality emerges." It's all unoriginal and nonsensical. But, director Nick Hamm, the sets, locations, and Mr. Kinnear's lead performance are good.***** Godsend (4/30/04) Nick Hamm ~ Greg Kinnear, Cameron Bright, Rebecca Romijn, Robert De Niro

In the movie Godsend, a couple loses their son in a car accident and will do anything to get him back. They befriend a stem cell research expert ( DeNiro), who makes a clone of the couple's son. The clone appears to be fine until his eighth birthday when a series of frightening events begin to happen. I was very disappointed with the movie because they took an interesting idea and made it boring. Cloning is a hot topic that has the potential to make an appealing movie, yet I found myself dozing off to a supposedly, "scary movie." I normally like Robert DeNiro and Greg Kenner, but they let me down in this movie. The music was lousy and the plot was filled with holes. The most frustrating thing about Godsend was that the entire movie built up to a conclusion that wasn't there. It's a shame that Hamm wasn't able to pull this movie off, it had an exciting idea that I was looking forward to.