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Unforgettable
Hell hath no fury like a mentally unstable, hair-obsessed ex-wife scorned in Denise Di Novi's psychological thriller. Made to a tried and tested recipe from a bygone era, when perfectly coiffed anti-heroines were hell-bent on destroying picture-perfect families, Unforgettable - aka Sleeping With The Enemy Whose Fatally Attractive Hand Rocks The Cradle - sits awkwardly between a crock and a hard place. Christina Hodson's lacklustre script is too serious to be lip-smacking, trashy entertainment, and too (unintentionally) camp and preposterous to be unsettling or scary. Thankfully, no cute household pets are boiled on the stove, but Di Novi's picture does tick off hoary tropes with weary abandon including a snarling cat fight, a cherubic child in peril, piercing glares that could freeze blood at fifty paces, and a gnarly villainess who refuses to die quietly. A superfluous sex scene in a restroom, intercut with another character breathlessly enjoying verbal intercourse in an online chatroom, fails to deliver an erotic charge and composer Toby Chu employs discordant rumbles to herald the Machiavellian meddlings of the film's impeccably tailored antagonist. The intended victim is San Francisco-based online editor, Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson), who has escaped her troubled past with the support of sassy best friend, Ali (Whitney Cummings). Sheltered from her violent old flame, Michael Vargas (Simon Kassianides), by a restraining order, Julia thinks she has found the perfect replacement in divorced father David Connover (Geoff Stults). Julia transplants her life across the country to be with David and his young daughter, Lily (Isabella Rice). David's ex-wife Tessa (Katherine Heigl) is still heavily involved in raising their child and Julia nervously settles into a home that used to be run by another woman. "You'll get used to Tessa, she'll calm down," David assures Julia as they wait for the perfect time to tell friends and family they are engaged. Julia's discomfort intensifies when it becomes apparent that Tessa still adores her ex-husband and is fiercely jealous of rivals for David's affections. Ali urges caution and one of David's friends issues a dire note of warning: "Tessa got possessive, turned into Gollum. David was her 'precious'." Alas, Tessa already has a nefarious plan in motion, to win back David and appease her iron-fisted mother (Cheryl Ladd), and Julia is her witless pawn. Unforgettable is a misnomer because there is nothing in Di Novi's picture that will be remembered - fondly or otherwise - after the credits roll. Dawson and Heigl aren't stretched in two-dimensional roles, the latter eliciting pantomime boos as her "psycho Barbie" takes out her frustration on knots in her daughter's flowing locks. The final showdown is a hoot for the wrong reasons including some ill-advised dialogue in the throes of death and a cliffhanger tease usually reserved for TV soap operas.
