Godsend

Nick Hamm 2004

After their son Adam (Cameron Bright) is killed shortly after his eight birthday Paul and Jessie Duncan (Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) reluctantly take the help of the eminent Doctor Wells (Robert “show me the money” De Niro) and have him cloned. However eight years later Adam’s behaviour starts to change and their new life starts to take a sinister turn.

Nick Hamm has let me down. He directed the utterly absorbing horror film “The Hole”, which showed he knew how to bring tension and cinematic darkness to the audience. “Godsend” however, is bland and quite frankly a woeful follow-up.

While watching this film I started to think about how formulaic Hollywood films are. The affluent American couple, heterosexual, white. One works in the Arts (Painter, Photographer) one works in a community-enhancing area (Doctor, Teacher) they have a single child, well behaved, intelligent, no disabilities. The equilibrium of this perfect life is disrupted and so the course of the film is them seeking resolution. Yawn.

I am starting to wonder whether De Niro reads scripts anymore or whether he just counts the zeros on his cheque. As my mind wandered again during this film I realised that the beard seems to be the barometer to De Niro’s screen appearances. The more facial hair he sports the worse the film.

I really didn’t care about anyone in this film. The lacklustre parents or the creepy, even when he’s not meant to be creepy, little boy. However, as always with these types of thrillers, the child actor shines through. I’m starting to think there is a creepy child’s acting guild in operation in America.

I have seen films that are much worse but I have also seen plenty of better ones too. Avoid this and watch “The Omen” instead.