Julianne Moore stars in sci-fi thriller The Forgotten, playing a grieving mother whose memories of her dead child may be a figment of her imagination. It's certainly an intriguing idea and it managed to get bums on seats, but this is ultimately a "disappointing and daft" conspiracy thriller with an ending that even The X Files' Agent Mulder would find hard to swallow.

The Dream Factory

It's difficult to distinguish between the two 'making of' featurettes presented on this DVD. They're both rather pedestrian, although the story of how screenwriter Gerald Di Pego came to conceive the project is worth hearing. He reveals that it all started with a disturbing dream about a family photo in which a child slowly fades from view. From there Di Pego got to writing and boasts that, within 24 hours of finishing the script, it was sold to Revolution Studios. However, director Joseph Ruben explains that it was "the bond between mother and child" that appealed to him more than the twisty plot and Moore echoes this in talking about "the human element" of the story.

On The Set offers more talking heads with just a few snippets of behind-the-scenes footage. Here, Ruben talks up Moore's co-star, British actor Dominic West, who came to his attention in HBO series The Wire. "It's an incredibly thrilling thriller!" remarks the excitable Yorkshireman, but we're sure he's more thrilled than we are about this Hollywood hokum. Despite her earlier waffle, Moore reveals that she too is just a child at heart - drawn to the movie because she likes "lots of running around" and "car chases". And in keeping with the disc's spirit of inconsistency, Ruben assures us, "We didn't want it to be too movieish."

Thanks For The Memories

Ruben expands on his oxymoronic philosophy in a fairly interesting but sometimes laughable audio commentary, banging on about "going for realism" as the aliens swoop down. He shares the track with Di Pego who goes over that fateful dream one more time and reveals, "I developed the bones of the story in those first two hours after waking." That mightn't surprise some people, but Ruben simply can't get his head around it, eventually responding with, "Boy! We overpaid you then..."

An alternative ending is among three deleted scenes and will be of special interest to those who wound up throwing popcorn at the screen the first time around. On the other hand, those same people could just as well end up chucking their DVD players out the window after seeing this version. Ultimately though, it may be the only reason you buy The Forgotten on DVD, because everything else quickly fades from memory.

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