GODSEND

Funnily enough, Godsend feels like a movie cloned with bits of DNA from other horror movies.

If I had any sense at all I would be writing a screenplay right now instead of reviewing Godsend, because apparently any schmuck with a membership to Blockbuster Video can get his movie made. Not only that, he can get Robert DeNiro to star in it.

Godsend begins when Paul (Greg Kinnear) and Jessie (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) lose their only son Adam (so poignantly named) when he is hit by a car. After the funeral they are approached by Jessie's old college professor, Dr. Wells (Robert DeNiro), who just happened to read about the accident in the paper, and just happened to remember Jessie. He takes them to dinner, and suggests that they clone Adam, so that he can live a long and happy life. We wouldn't have a movie unless the couple said yes, and things progress happily until New-Adam turns eight (the age the first kid died). Then things begin to get weird. The catch is that he's not really just one boy, he's Adam with a dash of another boy's genes, and yes, Dr. Wells is the evil mastermind.

Funnily enough, Godsend feels like a movie cloned with bits of DNA from other horror movies. There's a big old house in the country and the little boy may or may not be trying to kill his mother, like The Omen. Behind the house are some woods and a creepy little shed like Watcher In The Woods. The little boy is sometimes Adam and sometimes Zach, just like Danny is sometimes Tony in The Shining. A nanny tries to drown a kid in the tub, like Bette Davis in The Nanny. Just before something scary happens, we are plunged into darkness when a light bulb breaks—like in Signs. Like Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, the little boy sees dead people; especially himself. In general the ghosts look like they were plucked from The Sixth Sense or Stir of Echoes. All of this ceases to be scary once it's recycled a few times.

The screenplay seemed like a rough draft that you would bring to a workshop for critique, but apparently revising is unnecessary in Hollywood. Had Mark Bomback bothered to take his script to a workshop, here are some of the things people would have written in the margins:

Needs more character development.
Why does Dr. Wells remember Jessie?
Why do Dr. Wells and Jessie keep exchanging lusty looks?
Did Jessie achieve her high grades in Dr. Wells' class through unsavory means?
Did any of your professors remember your name when you were actually in there class? Because it's freakin' weird that he remembers her ten years later.
Why do bad things happen when Dr. Wells fiddles with his Chinese medicine balls?
Why did Dr. Wells want to clone his dead son when his dead son was Evil?
Tell me again why only some of the evil kid's DNA survived?
Why is Paul such a wuss?
How does Adam saying "I am your son" make his spookiness more palatable for his parents?

And by each scene you would find the following word written in red pen: cliché

That aside, Godsend was a lot funnier that it was scary. After a certain point, I would start to laugh every time one of the main characters would come on the screen, including Robert DeNiro. Sure he's a cinematic genius, but once you get him to say the words "extremely illegal" with a sincere look on his face, everything that follows is pretty absurd. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos conveys her character's deep sadness by looking like a heroin addict, complete with random shaking, a sweaty pallor, dark circles under her eyes, and illogical outfits. Greg Kinnear is simply a pushover lacking in any sort of hero qualities. All in all, the acting equaled the quality of the script, unless you count the performance of Cameron Bright, the creepy kid who may not have been acting at all.