“Godsend,” definitely not a movie to be thankful for, underbids last weekend’s trio of disreputable thrillers about imperiled or cursed children: “Man on Fire,” “Close Your Eyes” and “I’m Not Scared.” The novelty aspect is supposed to be the cloned child who looms as a bad-seed changeling. Judging from the handiwork of director Nick Hamm and writer Mark Bomback, “Godsend” is a variation better suited for dozing off than arousing profound pathos.
Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos are cast as a Manhattan couple, Paul and Jessie Duncan, preparing to host the eighth birthday party of their son, Adam (Cameron Bright, an able 10-year-old who surfaced earlier in “The Butterfly Effect”).
Paul is granted a reprieve from a mugging on the way to the party: The assailant begs off when he recognizes his victim as his high school biology teacher. This early detour hints at a subsequent sociological point: The Duncans are reluctantly contemplating a move to the suburbs.
The day after the party, Adam is sideswiped by an out-of-control motorist near a construction site. At a bleakly picturesque, snowbound chapel near a graveyard, the bereaved parents are approached by one of Jessie’s former college teachers, an obstetrician-turned-genetic-researcher named Richard Wells, portrayed by an avuncular Robert De Niro. Somewhat apologetically, but rushed for time because the late Adam’s cells will remain “viable” for just 72 hours, Dr. Wells urges the Duncans to consider an urgent cloning inception at his fertility clinic in Vermont, the Godsend Institute.
Outraged at first, the Duncans change their minds within the time limit and become most privileged subjects in a Godsend protection program. Dr. Wells installs them in a spacious Victorian lakeside residence, and Jessie gives birth to another son, whom Dr. Wells has touted as “an identical boy, down to the last hair on his hand.” The Duncans don’t seem to be paying for any of this intervention, which includes a job for Paul at the local high school. If they were, a money-back guarantee would have been a prudent hedge.
The continuity leaps ahead to the eighth birthday of the replacement Adam, who begins to go creepy soon after passing the original’s “death line.” Nightmares suggest that he is haunted by a sinister double, who appears behind reflective surfaces.
Defective Adam is also attracted to a tumbledown utility shack festooned with possible instruments of harm. Every setting becomes a potential deathtrap, particularly bathrooms with curtained tubs. The soundtrack is roiled by unsettling noises, including a tearing impression aimed at Miss Romijn-Stamos. The dedicated but no longer disarming Dr. Wells begins an obsessive palming of steel balls, conspicuously larger than the set Capt. Queeg needed to steady his nerves in “The Caine Mutiny.”
The upshot of all this evil-minded hokum is scarcely life-affirming. Having found it expedient to punish the Duncans for cherishing a son and planning to leave the city, the filmmakers doggedly rub it in by condemning them to a supernatural demon world evidently triggered by Dr. Wells’ experiments. It’s more satisfying to imagine an obscure corner in hell reserved for all the filmmakers who trifle shabbily with primal fears in movies as maliciously uninspired as “Godsend.”
*1/2
TITLE: “Godsend”
RATING: PG-13 (Sustained ominous and morbid elements; occasional violence; fleeting profanity and sexual candor)
CREDITS: Directed by Nick Hamm. Written by Mark Bomback. Cinematography by Kramer Morgenthau.
RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes
MAXMIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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