Unforgettable could best be described as a Fatal Attraction wannabe and for the most part, you’d be right. Since it’s pretty much a dead giveaway that Katharine Heigl is the bad guy and Rosario Dawson is the victim, there’s no real suspense. However, that doesn’t stop it from being an almost passable thriller.
It stars Heigl as a divorced mother who has to cope with the fact that her ex (Geoff Stults) is getting remarried to a new woman (Dawson). At first, Heigl seems calm, cool, and collected about the prospect, but eventually her inner dark side comes out and she becomes jealous and paranoid and determined to do whatever she can to keep Dawson away from her daughter.
Heigl’s character is nothing but a psychotic control freak with no real personality. She likes to dictate and dominate and micromanage every little detail of her daughter’s life.
While all this is going on, Dawson is haunted by nightmarish visions of her ex whose restraining order she filed a year prior has expired. That’s just another manipulative tool Heigl uses at her disposal to drive a wedge even further.
You’re not going to see much in Unforgettable that you haven’t seen in a lot of other domestic thrillers including Fatal Attraction and even elements of Sleeping With the Enemy. It simply relies on getting from Point A to Point B of the screenplay and then following that same chain until the inevitable climax between the two women which looks like something out of a Lifetime movie.
I may sound like I’m criticizing the movie, but not exactly. It did hold my attention just enough, but not quite enough to recommend it. Producer Denise Di Novi makes her directorial debut with a film that looks good and is made with some style and has some campy, bonkers moments, but presents a lot of unoriginal trappings.
I think I might make a new rule as a critic. If I can be entitled to one guilty pleasure this year, it’s this one.
Grade: B-
(Rated R for sexual content, violence, some language, and brief partial nudity).
