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Paul (Greg Kinnear) and Jessie (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) Duncan lose their eight-year-old son, Adam (Cameron Bright), in a tragic accident, but before his body is cold, Jessie’s old college professor, Richard Wells (Robert De Niro), turns up and tells the grief-stricken parents that he can bring their boy back. What he proposes amounts to cloning, and because that’s illegal, he requires the Duncans to move to the quaint hamlet upstate where his Godsend Fertility Institute is based. Flash-forward eight years: Adam is back, and the Duncans are enjoying a coddled lakeside existence courtesy of Richard’s largesse. Then the boy (Bright again, but with a devilish glimmer) starts experiencing night terrors and seeing dead people. Steeped in Biblical references and pseudo-Satanic intrigue, Godsend doesn’t raise a single hair of suspense. Long before the first seizure, you know that Jessie’s embryo has been basted with something other than just Adam. Director Nick Hamm exacerbates matters with his proclivity for foreboding images, be it the rising mist in the woods, the caw of a crow, or the dilapidated cabin no one should enter. The result is an ersatz Rosemary’s Baby that no one should sit through. (102 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
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