Film Review: Forget Me Not (2009)

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SYNOPSIS:

It’s graduation weekend, and Sandy Channing, the popular class president of her small-town high school, should be enjoying the time of her life. But when her friends start disappearing, Sandy discovers they have unwittingly awakened the vengeful spirit of a girl they wronged long ago. Fighting for her sanity, Sandy must unlock a dark secret from her own past before it’s too late.

REVIEW:

It’s a good thing theye dropped the orignal title of “Revenge of the College Ghost”, as it doesn’t really inspire a “have to see” aura.

Sandy Channing (Carly Schroeder) should have it all worked out as her and her friends enjoy the summer in a small town that is celebrating graduation weekend. The best friends are having the time of their life, that is until they start disappearing one by one.

Even though kids will be kids, it’s the past that comes back to haunt them. Flashbacks of Sandy’s former friend Angela (Brittany Renee Finamore) seem to increase as her about to be perfect summer starts to turn into a nightmare Sandy can’t wake from.

As kids, they played a game they participated in for kicks involving chanting and awakening the dead. This of course was all in good fun but it was “supposed” to be a game that was only shared between her and Angela. Sandy thought it would be funny to up the scale into dramatic consequences.

As they party, enjoy life and mingle, a strange entity starts to emerge that takes each of them out of the circle of life one by one. In fact in the vein of a twilight zone episode, as each friend is taken, so is any trace of their life or inclusion that would have normally occurred during their life. This is hard to grasp for Sandy who remembers each friend while everyone around her doesn’t. It’s like their entire existence was plucked from the life cycle. To help induce some fear into this concept, the takers arive in these specter-like zombie creatures that move fast enough to bend physics and pull each back into the afterlife.

With a creepy almost Ring-like style meets Crow meets Emily Rose, these things are pretty effective in their look and execution. Though with any good scare , there exist a back story that Sandy will have to unravel to get to the bottom of her recent troubles.

“Forget me Not” seems to hit all its target goals with a pretty active young cast and a ghostly storyline. The ghouls or angels as we’ll refer to them as are damn creepy and enhanced with some dynamic kinetic flair. I’m not entirely sure what it is that they were wearing, but as we learn they are spawned mainly from Angela’s imagination. As the nun says, “if you believe in something enough it will come true”. I highly enjoyed this movie for the simple fact that it “does” make a notable attempt at delivering on the younger crowd market but in a different way than other films we have seen.

These fast reincarnations of souls employ the notable jaw drop effect and zip around like Twilight vampires. What I found more unsettling was that as they increase in numbers they hoard and attack like a collection of Marilyn Manson’s with a stuttering problem.In fact you might even compare a few of these things to the bands videos in that sense.

The film evolves on the central theme of a game they played as kids. This in combination with the back story on what happened makes it’s way nicely into a pretty worthy resolve ending.

Now, I’ve heard from enough fans that their will be those who simply hate everything jittery and modern. It’s almost like a boycott on “The Ring” effects or something. But readers take note, this is a pretty cool little film. Formula inclusion is inevitable because the studios still have to make their returns.. To the relief of a few, there is no slasher fare here, the film works more on the supernatural end. The time erasure premise is also a nice touch to a story that might have suffered without it. “Forget Me Not” is not a hand down slam dunk, but it’s still good modern horror.

Directed by Tyler Oliver, “Forget Me Not” makes for a recommended horror film that serves up a helping of creepiness.

Forget Me Not (2009)