Godsend Year: 2004 Director: Nick Hamm Written by: Mark Bomback Threat: Schizophrenic clone Weapon of Choice: hammer Based upon: none IMDb page:

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Rish's Reviews
Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos are the world's handsomest couple, with the world's handsomest, most bestest behaved kid, Adam. But then he dies. Luckily, an professor of Romijn's, played by Robert DeNiro, comes along and offers to clone Adam and implant him inside the mother, so she can have the chance to carry him and raise him a second time. Sounds good, no? Well, that's where the complications come in.
I loved the premise of Godsend. Nice title, by the way. My friend and I have talked many times about cloning, and the scientific, moral, and speculative ramifications of that procedure. But the film came out, was bashed by critics, and did not do well at the box office, so I figured I'd take everybody's word for it. And then I didn't.
And the movie turned out to be a pretty good horror film. It featured dream sequences, visions, alternate memories, and just plain fake scares, many of which--no, I'm going to say MOST of which--worked extremely well.
Rebecca Romijn is just sickeningly attractive, reminding me of all the girls I've ever loved and never had a chance with. Robert De Niro was able, with what looked like no real effort on his part, to create a wholly believable character whose every word sounded well-thought-out and perfectly expressed, rather than written by a screenwriter somewhere. Greg Kinnear, who was on his way to becoming a big star just a few years ago, was also really good as the grieving, but still suspicous father. The boy was appropriately creepy, alternating between a haunted innocent and a frightening stranger.
The idea of stem-cell research and human cloning fascinates me nearly as much as it seems to scare religious people and politicians. I mean, who's to say that if you drowned a puppy, then extracted a cell from it and cloned a new puppy, that that dog wouldn't be afraid of the water? The possibilities are endless, as well as the potential for Science Fiction and Horror stories.
There's a moment toward the end of the film that repeated the theme of Jurassic Park (another film sort of about cloning), which was, Just because we CAN do something doesn't mean we SHOULD. It was a nice moment, because a character says, more or less, "if this thing went against science or nature, then I wouldn't have been able to do it."
This film sat on a shelf for a while (never a good sign), but wasn't too bad. Not great, not something I'll have to buy, but worth seeing, and worth talking about. I think what threw the critics into a tizzy was the fuzzy science behind the twist of the film. But since I know nothing about gene-splicing, DNA recombination, cloned mental development, or normal human relations, I was willing to suspend my disbelief and simply watch the film.
A lot of times, all people can do (especially on the internet) is complain about how bad a film is, deriving a sort of superior glee in proclaiming all movies crap, but as I've said again and again (and will continue to say again and again), if you go into a film with low expectations, expecting to see something bad, many times, you will enjoy yourself, definitely more than the people who stomp out of a theater complaining about what an abortion they'd just witnessed.
I'd Recommend It To: People who are willing to give it a shot on video.
Note: Because the film did not do well, people will forget that for about thirty seconds, this movie produced a bit of controversy by creating a fake website for the Godsend Institute, where grieving parents could take their child's DNA and have an exact duplicate created for them. Even though it was just a tie-in for the movie, the toll-free number listed on the website got many calls from interested parties, as well as from religious nuts proclaiming they were doing the devil's work with such procedures. I heard about it on the news, and thought that was pretty remarkable, in a sadly bemused sort of way.

Total Skulls: 15

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?