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# ‘Forgotten’ surely will be by audiences, critics alike
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/forgotten-surely-will-be-by-audiences-critics-alike/
- Published: 2004-09-24T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T05:10:36.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

“The Forgotten” surely will be, and quickly at that. Julianne Moore plays Telly, a woman haunted and confused by the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of her 8-year-old son in a plane crash 14 months earlier. And no wonder she’s baffled — the story, by “Angel Eyes” scribe Gerald DiPego, while semi-plausible at first, quickly devolves into an incomprehensible mélange of sci-fi hooey, car chases and rapidly disappearing persons. What isn’t in the mix, however, is genuine empathy for parents who lose their children and the psychological devastation they must subsequently endure.

This is an action flick, and the tragic event that sets it in motion is treated like a mere convenience, subverting any chance Moore and her capable co-stars Dominic West (“Mona Lisa Smile”), Gary Sinise and Anthony Edwards might have had to add some emotional heft to proceedings. As Telly and Ash (West) — who also presumes to have lost a child — hotfoot it out of one precarious spot after another trying to elude mysterious NSA agents and a seemingly ubiquitous alien, the film increasingly, ridiculously takes on the tenor of a long-lost episode of “The X-Files” that should have remained missing.

The ending is so far out there, that it may as well have been written by aliens. The truth is out there: This movie is a dud. (Rated PG-13 for intense thematic material, some violence and brief language.)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 24, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/092404.pdf?ref=smdp.com)