Forget Me
Not
Even
in the annals of stupid moves by characters in horror movies – which is a
long, if not particularly distinguished list – the premise of Forget Me
Not rides on a bit of a whopper.
A
group of beautiful-but-stupid teens gets tired of making out, doing shots
and playing truth or dare at a house party. They decide to go play a high
concept version of hide and seek called “Ghost” at a local graveyard at
midnight. As they are getting started with the game, a strange girl they
don’t know suddenly appears over a tombstone, saying this is her favorite
game and asking if she could play with them.
The
kids – who have obviously never seen a horror film before – see no red flags
at all about this turn of events. They say sure.
I’m
sorry, but nobody – no matter how stoned or stupid they might be – is going
to think that was a good idea. After all, they are in the middle of a
deserted graveyard in the middle of the night, what really are the chances
that someone would just happen to be there? And even on the outside chance
that someone just happened to be loitering in the middle of a secluded
graveyard at midnight on Saturday night, would that really be the kind of
person you’d want to invite to join your group?
But,
okay, fine. We’ll give Forget Me Not the benefit of the doubt on its
setup.
After all, if you’re waiting for a horror film with a realistic set up, you
will grow old and bitter long before finishing your quest.
It
turns out – no great shock – that there is something supernaturally wrong
with the new group member. As the game is winding down, she goes up to the
lead character Sandy (Carly Schroeder) and asks her if Sandy remembers her.
Sandy says no. The new girl says, “You will,” and jumps off a cliff.
No
body is found when the police come, and everyone starts to think that Sandy
made the whole thing up. Everyone decides to go on with their lives, but
suddenly, one by one, the gang is attacked and killed by a shambling, angry
ghost. The ghosts are definitely of the Japanese film variety, instead of
gracefully floating like American ghosts do, these spirits move in awkward,
non-rhythmic herky-jerky gestures which almost makes them look like a
homicidal variation of the crowd at a Grateful Dead show. I wish I could
say it made them scary, but honestly it made them look kind of silly, like
they were popping and locking while trying to kill people.
The
killings in Forget Me Not are rather novel in one way. Once a
character is murdered, they are literally erased from history. No one
remembers them other than our heroine. This brings up an interesting
philosophical conundrum for the viewer: if people are being murdered, but no
one else realizes that they ever existed, are they really dead? And if they
are really dead but no one knows that they were ever alive, should anyone
really feel the need mourn their deaths?
Of
course, we’d get a lot more worked up about the deaths if the characters
weren’t such slimy, unlikable jerks. In general, the guys are
assholes and the girls are whores, with the exception of Sandy and her shy,
virginal brother.
It’s
not a complete exception, though, Sandy is supposed to be the nice, pure
girl, but still when she describes a childhood variation of the “ghost”
game, even she does it with the charming explanation, “I didn’t know if I
was going to have a heart attack or if I was going to have an orgasm.” So,
nice and pure, it appears, is a relative term.
As
her friends meet violent and sudden deaths and become recruited into an
uncoordinated army of the dead, Sandy eventually realizes that she did
know the mysterious girl years before. When she was in junior high, she
befriended a high-strung local girl. Sandy and her friends played a
practical joke on her one night, and apparently she is the type to hold a
big grudge.
However, by the time Sandy figures out what is going on, everybody thinks
she is crazy because she keeps going on about these murdered friends that no
one has ever heard of.
In
the meantime, old school actors Christopher Atkins (The Blue Lagoon,
Dallas) and Barbara Bain (Mission: Impossible) show up briefly as
Sandy’s father and the Mother Superior at an orphanage and over-emote for a
rare chance at an acting paycheck.
This
all leads to a pretty standard showdown between Sandy and the forces of evil
in a shockingly deserted hospital. (When they arrive it is full of doctors
and patients, but later no one is in the halls or any of the rooms.)
I’ll
even give Forget Me Not the credit that it kind of has a decent
(if not completely shocking) final twist. Too bad
most of the movie leading up to it never quite deserves its payoff.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2011 PopEntertainment.com.
All rights reserved. Posted: May 6, 2011.
