The title of this film has no significance in terms of what you see on screen and it is pretty derivative. In that respect it is fairly apt, as this is a strictly by the numbers thriller.
Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson) is starting a new life. She is moving to a small town to live with her fiancée David Connover (Geoff Stults). She is keeping her job but “working” from home. Now, I have done that in the past and it didn’t involve spending my days having boozy lunches and clothes shopping but Julia, in the grand tradition of American films, has a swanky lifestyle without seeming to do any work.
David shares custody of his daughter Lily (Isabella Kai Rice) with his ex-wife Tessa (Katherine Heigl). Tessa is very jealous of Julia and wants her ex-husband back. When she discovers Julia has a restraining order against an abusive ex-boyfriend, she begins to hatch a plan.
It’s very easy to pick holes in Unforgettable. It is pure hokum, with a very predictable story, right down to the twist ending. The story-line also does not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. Why has David not realised that Tessa is a psycho? Why, apart it being convenient for the plot, does Julia not tell David about her troubled past, especially when she starts receiving silent phone calls? Why are the police so incurious – letting Julia go, when there is a stack of evidence against her and then later believing her story when that evidence has continued to mount? Additionally the characters are mostly irritating (Julia’s friend from work), dull (David) or frustrating (Julia).
So, you would think the film is total write-off, but in fact, some things do save it from. Heigl uses her iciness to better effect here than in the rom-coms she usually populates, so she makes a chilling villain and Rice does well for such a young actor. Most of the credit, however needs to go to rookie director Denise Di Novi who keeps things moving at a nice pace. She does manage to provide a couple of tense scenes – one when Julia thinks she has a intruder and one where Lily gets lost at a fair -and, despite all the flaws, I found myself willing for Julia to dispatch Tessa at the end.
Rating: 5 out of 10