‘Unforgettable’ Is A Solid Suspense Thriller

It looks like a half-hearted attempt at adapting The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and for a thriller, plays it too safe. “I need the caffeine”. I think Isabella did understand that it was performance; she’s eight-years-old, she’s old enough to understand, but it was still just hard. The story is so painfully overblown that it’s actually kind of awesome that the movie was produced at all. The rest is a tiresome, fun-free slab of a film. On the other side of the spectrum is an incredible Katherine Heigl, making a triumphant comeback as David’s terrifyingly Stepford-esque ex-wife, Tessa. She’s moved away from her friends, put a dark relationship behind her, and started anew with ideal husband David (Geoff Stults).

Heigl plays Tessa, a Malibu supermom who turns bunny boiler after her stubble-bearded hubby David (Geoff Stults), a Wall Street hotshot turned California microbrewer, dumps her for his new lover Julia, a web editor played by Rosario Dawson. Julia, a colorful contrast to Tessa, is caring, concerned and a little dense. She still lives in the house they shared when they were married, along with their 8-year-old daughter, Lily (Isabella Kai Rice). Tessa’s anger springs from a place deeper than jealousy.

That’s definitely what made Tessa who she is, and also, Tessa’s suffering from some mental illness that has never been addressed, and her mother is definitely exacerbating that with the pressure she’s put on her-the judgment, the vague disdain for her failings-and the more that pressure builds, the more Tessa crumbles.

There is no doubt Tessa is a shitty person.

Meanwhile, Katherine – who also has two adopted daughters Naleigh, eight, and Adalaide, five – would love to expand her family and previously confessed that she has “already tried” asking her husband Josh for more kids. Problem is, this is not an entertaining villain. By the time the cameras started rolling, Heigl and Dawson were out front with veteran producer Denise Di Novi making her debut behind the lens. Someone for the audience to hiss at. Here, she’s revamped her image and stepped into the shoes of a woman on the verge of madness.

She’s the descendant of Alex “Fatal Attraction” Forrest, Nurse Ratched, Annie Wilkes and Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest” – trapped in a script that even the Lifetime channel might reject for being too over the top. At the height of Julia’s ordeal, she screams in his face, ‘She’s fucking insane, David! Not so much. Heigl shows no humor and plays it entirely sincerely, as if “Unforgettable” were an intense drama. And Julia has a shrink and a couple of good friends that help drain what tension there is out of the movie; surely the idea with an effective thriller is to isolate the protagonist? “I think with every mother it’s just this sort of perpetual mommy guilt that somehow you’re kind of not nailing it and to mess up his schedule.because of me, my work needs, feels a little selfish”.