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Godsend
Lions Gate Films Inc.


4.0

based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 27 votes
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Rate this movie

FILM:

The Very Thought of You

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for violence including frightening images, a scene of sexuality and some thematic material

Starring Greg Kinnear, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, Robert De Niro, Cameron Bright, Merwin Mondesir, Sava Drayton, Jake Simons, and Elle Downs

Paul and Jessie Duncan (Kinnear, Romijn-Stamos) have lost their beloved eight year-old son Adam (Bright) in a tragic accident. As they are arranging for his burial, Dr. Richard Wells (De Niro) approaches with the incredible offer to clone, and bring back their boy. (Lions Gate Films)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Fantasy \| Horror \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Mark Bomback
DIRECTED BY:	Nick Hamm
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 17, 2004 Video: August 17, 2004 Theatrical: April 30, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	102 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Canada

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

Downright scary in some places, Godsend might be more potent if it wasn't watered down by religious trope predictability.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The umpteenth recycled shocker about a mystical dark child with an aura of disaster.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Unravels in a series of spooky dream sequences, dopey detective work, and a couple of richly hambone-ian De Niro soliloquies.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The best that can be said about the film is that its naturalistic look and dark hues are occasionally intriguing, and its twist is fairly unpredictable, if far-fetched.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It's a thriller, a bad thriller, completely lacking in psychological or emotional truth.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Godsend is two-thirds of a good movie, with a final third that's just downright awful. So much wasted potential only makes the whole thing that much more painful.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

To its credit, the film has an engagingly bleak and minimalist look, and a brisk pace. But the chills are few. Every step seems contrived, predictable or unintentionally funny.

Variety Joe Leydon

Solid performances, handsome production values and a few genuinely creepy scenes are not enough to save Godsend.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

When is a horror movie not a horror movie? When it’s a strained, by-the-numbers production that limps to an unlikely conclusion like Godsend.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

With its cheap scares, its defiant lack of special effects, and the most blatant usage of a red coat as a stand-out prop since Schindler’s List, Godsend is as much an experiment-gone-wrong as its Frankensteinesque plot.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Godsend is godawful.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

De Niro wears a shamefaced look most of the time, as if doubly embarrassed: He agreed to a movie he knew was worthless, yet he's too lazy or indifferent to give us his best.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

As the film's boo! moments get spookier and more frequent, Godsend gets more and more inane.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

A consistently underused and often underrated actor, Kinnear gives one of those sympathetic performances that prevent you from believing the worst about a movie despite the sounding alarms.

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

This thin concoction of domestic drama and thriller suspense won't hold up after the curiosity factor runs its brief course. Neither Robert De Niro nor a phalanx of a dozen producers can deliver Godsend from unintentional comedy.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Despite its provocative premise, this throwback to deliberately paced, low-tech chillers of the pre-CGI era is a dreary slog through haunted-child movie cliches -- portentous dreams, glassy-eyed stares, cryptic pronouncements.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Kinnear and Romijn-Stamos appear to be vying for the title of filmdom's least-convincing married couple, while Robert De Niro, as the movie's modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, takes his own expert career slumming to a new depth -- he's become an evil clone of a once-great actor.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

As in most bad thrillers, the number of pointless shocks increases in direct proportion to the drama's decreasing vitality, like defibrilator paddles jolting a dying man.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The picture, which fails to achieve its ambitions or to fulfill our expectations, is ultimately worse than a violent piece of hack work, in which the director isn't interested in displaying his integrity -- or taste. You'd be better off downloading the trailer: a much more convincing piece of storytelling.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

There's no excuse for a thriller as lame, leaden and unthrilling as Godsend, which manages to take a potentially interesting subject - human cloning - and use it to put audiences to sleep.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

In Godsend, we have the spectacle of three good actors tied to the mast of a sinking premise.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Every scare is telegraphed. Every surprise is recycled from a better thriller. Even the devil would send this one back.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

At the half-hour mark, Godsend falls off the edge of reason, veering wildly away from what seems the promising beginning of a drama about the ethics of human cloning and instead becomes the cheesiest of hallucinatory horror movies.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

How could such a high-octane cast produce such low-octane horror?

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

An unsatisfying, overly restrained bore, capped off by an ending so strange and inconclusive, it feels like something you'd find on the ''deleted scenes'' portion of a DVD.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Neither very scary nor very interesting, Godsend is an unresurrectable muddle.

Village Voice Mark Holcomb

The pivotal plot twist isn't hard to predict, and Brit theater vet Hamm and screenwriter Mark Bomback rely on jolts that date back to the silent era.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

It mostly serves as a warning to stay away from future films involving director Nick Hamm and screenwriter Mark Bomback.

Empire Mark Dinning

Godsend is based on an intriguing premise. Sadly, it's mangled into an Omen-lite disaster area, thanks to a script torn between making a moral point about cloning and cheap shocks.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Godsend makes swill of religion, science, family, and morality. It has the sensitivity of a cactus, the ingenuity of a square wheel, and the integrity of a CEO.

Slate David Edelstein

Turns into a pea-brained hodgepodge of "The Omen" (1976), "The Sixth Sense" (1999), and about 30 Grade-Z Bela Lugosi mad-scientist movies.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Not just a bad thriller but also a thing of pain.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.0 (out of 10) based on 27 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Felix Q. gave it a7:
For the most part, not terrible. It's a fair, if not wholely unique concept, and terrifically cast. It's not as bad as it's painted, it's really quite passable- a mid level thriller with the creepiest (I mean that in a good way!) child actor ever. I would've given it an 8, but really I expected more from the ending. As I said, the concept itself is intriguing if slightly over-used, but a great ending would've pulled this whole thing up.

Deluge gave it a3:
Godsend is a terrible thriller. It's not worth watching in theaters, not worth renting it on DVD not even worth watching it on channel 45 if it airs on tv.

D gave it a1:
Saddly dissapointing ending.

Mark B. gave it a1:
Since Robert De Niro played the Frankenstein monster in Kenneth Branagh's take on Mary Shelley's horror saga, perhaps he wanted to get on the other side of the operating table and take a shot at playing the not-so-good doctor. That, or maybe the reason he signed on for this predictable, offensive bore is that he's pretty much taking ANY script that floats his way these days. (At least Sir Laurence Olivier had grandchildren he wanted to leave as much money as he could to after his death; what's your excuse, Bob?) Distraught couple Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Rojmin-Stamos, having lost their third-grade son in a cruel accident, take De Niro's offer to clone him; needless to say, the results are more predictable than expected. The fact that Kinnear and Rojmin-Stamos are so convincing at portraying genuine parental anguish and grief in the early parts of the film (even if their performances become torpid and routine once the operation is performed) is a key to precisely what makes this film so obnoxious; I'm not saying that some subjects aren't suitable for filmmaking, even in the horror genre (can you imagine what the brilliant David Cronenberg could've done with this material 25 years ago?), but the greatest tragedy that a parent can face deserves much, much more respectful handling than a lazy hack job full of fraudulent ankle grabs, "shock" musical stings and eleventh-hour twists that are surprises to all but millions of reasonably intelligent viewers. Getting back to De Niro and his participation in this, something (anything!) has gotta be done to restore the man's pride in his selection of roles and films, and I think I've got a good kill-two-birds-with-one-stone idea. Arrange with the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences that if Martin Scorsese will put Bobby in a movie that turns out half as good as Goodfellas or Raging Bull (hell, let's settle for half as good as Casino or Cape Fear) then Marty gets his long-awaited Best Director Oscar no matter who the competition is. Deal? Okay? Please?

Michael V gave it a0:
Oh come on! You can tell a movie sucls when it has lines like "Oh i have to do the dishes, do the the laundry...oh and i have to do you!" and a sex scene insues. Give me a break!

sasha t gave it a5:
Ok...well robert deniro was always great ! what happened to him? his last movies are horrible, including godsend that was a stupid movie, meet the fockers (not as good as meet the parents) and his last movie (wich i saw 2day) come out ,come out whoever you are (was even scaryer then godsend).

Tyler C gave it a7:
To the people in the theatres, I can understand why it would get such a low score. If you get the DVD. You can see the 4 extra alternate endings which makes up a lot for the movie. The alternate endings tell us that a lot went into this movie and it also had Robert DeNiro!!

Godsend Lions Gate Films Inc.

Godsend
Lions Gate Films Inc.