Godsend (film)
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| Godsend | |
|---|---|
 Godsend film poster |
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| Directed by | Nick Hamm |
| Produced by | Marc Butan Sean O'Keefe Cathy Schulman |
| Written by | Mark Bomback |
| Starring | Greg Kinnear Rebecca Romijn Cameron Bright and Robert De Niro |
| Music by | Brian Tyler |
| Distributed by | Lions Gate Films |
| Release date(s) | April 30, 2004 |
| Running time | 102 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Godsend is a 2004 horror/drama movie, and is directed by Nick Hamm. The score is by Brian Tyler.
As a part of the movie's promotional campaign, Lions Gate Films set up a website for the fictional Godsend Institute in the movie, which claimed to be able to resurrect the dead. Lions Gate changed the website to inform people that it was only an advertisement, due to the large number of inquiries asking if they really resurrect dead family members.
The movie was evaluated by critics as being poor, receiving only 3% positive reviews on Rottentomatoes.com, and is noted for implausible plot devices.
[edit] Plot
Jessie and Paul Duncan are a couple married happily with an eight-year-old son Adam. However, the day after Adam's eighth birthday, Adam is killed in a roadside accident. While leaving a church, Jessie and Paul are confronted by Dr. Richard Wells, an old teacher of Jessie's. Dr. Wells offers to clone Adam to which the Duncans reluctantly agree. Everything seems fine with the new Adam until he reaches his 8th birthday. That night he experiences a violent night terror. Dr. Wells tells Paul it is probably not serious and that after Adam II reached the age when the original Adam died his life would not be predictable anymore. From that moment on, Adam II continues to have night terrors until they become visions and he starts having them when he's wide awake.
Adam's visions are always the same: a boy named Zachary walks around in a school building while being laughed at by other children. These images alternate with images of the school burning and children screaming and the image of a woman being attacked and killed with a hammer.
One night at dinner, Jessie gets a telephone call from a parent of one the other children that goes to Adam's school, the child is missing. She tells Paul. Paul then asks what Adam was doing that day. Adam says that he was at the river, playing, when Paul asks who he was playing with Adam responds that he's, "...not supposed to say".
The next day, as the Duncans are driving on their way home over a bridge, they are slowed by a police officer. They hear over the side of the bridge the screams of a woman shouting, "My Baby, My Baby!" They walk to the side of the bridge to see the woman who had telephoned about her missing child the previous night screaming at the sight of her son, being retieved by paramedics from a river where he had drowned.
By examining Adam and talking to him about his visions Paul finally finds out that the school is called Saint Pius and that Zachary's last name is Clark. With this information he manages to find a former nanny of Zachary who informs Paul that Zachary was deeply disturbed; he was bullied at school, burned it down and, in the end, he killed his mother with a hammer before setting fire to their house. Through information that the nanny reveals about Zachary's father, Paul discovers that this was none other than Dr. Wells. He realizes then that Dr. Wells mixed Adam's DNA with that of Zachary with the hope of bringing his own son back to life.
After discovering this, Paul races home and finds Adam and Jessie in the shed in the woods, he arrives just in time to stop Adam from killing Jessie with an axe, in nearly the exact same way Zachary's mother was killed with the hammer.
In an attempt to shake the psychological transitions from Adam to Zachary, the Duncans move to a different neighbourhood. All seems well, Adam is friendly and happy, but as soon as his dad leaves him alone in one of the rooms, Adam hears a noise in the closet. He goes over to it, opens it, and sees nothing; he then turns around to leave, but then a slightly burnt and decayed arm, wearing the jersey that Zachary always did in the vision, reaches out from the darkness of the closet and pulls him in. Paul comes back to check on him, looks in the closet, and doesn't see anybody, but Adam is behind him.
[edit] Cast
- Greg Kinnear — Paul Duncan
- Rebecca Romijn — Jessie Duncan
- Robert De Niro — Richard Wells
- Cameron Bright — Adam Duncan
- Janet Bailey — Cora Williams
- Zoie Palmer — Susan Pierce
