AWFUL AUTUMNAL

REVIEWED - THE FORGOTTEN: Oh dear, that title. Better off Destined to be All too easily Short of calling their movie Codswallop, the producers of this barmy suspense thriller could not have offered reviewers a more generous early Christmas gift. Joseph Ruben's film is so lacking in narrative roughage that you can feel it seeping from your brain and draining through your ears as you watch. Were the press screening not ticked off in my diary, I would find it hard to credit that I had seen the blasted thing at all, writes Donald Clarke.

The picture begins decently enough amid a leafy, russet New York autumn. This season has been selected for the way it evokes decay and, I suspect, because it matches Julianne Moore so nicely. Ms Moore, who invests more energy in her performance than the material requires or deserves, plays a woman stricken by grief following the death of her son in a plane accident.

But hang on a moment. Only 15 minutes into the film we experience a jarring reversal when it is revealed that the unfortunate toddler is merely a figment of Moore's imagination. But hang on a moment. She then meets a boozy ex-hockey player whose experiences suggest that there might be a sinister pattern at work. Perhaps the youngster was real after all and his disappearance is being covered up by people with mackintoshes in dark motorcars. Maybe the whole grim business is the work of THEM. But hang on a moment. And so forth.

Somehow the eventual denouement manages the seeming paradox of being both preposterously outlandish and deadeningly predictable. Soon to be