An Unforgettable Cure for Insomnia: The Snoozefest That is the Erotic Thriller

by Emily Shipley

 (image via)

The fact that I almost forgot to write this review should tell you everything you need to know about Unforgettable and going to see it in theaters. In short: forget about it. In detail, I’ll explain why.




Unforgettable is a boring movie that lies to audiences and calls itself an erotic thriller, when there is nothing particularly erotic, thrilling, or memorable about it, aside from one random scene when the main characters have sex in a bathroom. But even still, every actor in this movie is robotic, the plot is contrived, and there are gaping holes in it so wide that viewers could fall in them if they only have half a brain. I went into this expecting an over-the-top performance of the same story laid out in Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy is Mine” and I didn’t get that; I got a stiff Rosario Dawson, who’s only acting chops include crying and sighing in frustration when her fiancée’s crazy ex- wife does crazy things, because, you know…it’s UNFORGETTABLE or something.


I also got an even stiffer Katherine Heigl, the bitter, upper-crust, horse-riding ex-wife who reincarnates her character more as Joan Crawford from Mommy Dearest than Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction. Her hair is parted and pulled back so severely throughout the movie it made my head hurt watching it. (This is not a joke—I actually told Christi I had a headache at the end of the film, and in retrospect, I think it’s because Katherine Heigl’s hair is helmeted to her skull with nary a strand out of place. It makes my head hurt just remembering it.) All I wanted was a new Fatal Attraction. It’s pretty much THE top picture about crazy exes and the lengths they will go to capture win back the ones they lost. Why can’t women just go bananas in 2017? Why do they have to purse their lips and pretend to like each other in movies like this?


The only scene with any action in Unforgettable is when things come to a head and we predictably get a cat fight between the two women over the Ken doll they both desire. That Ken doll is played by Geoff Stults, who lives up to his last name, delivering a performance that can only be described as “stulted.” It’s like stifled and stilted and stunted all got together and had a baby—and a neologism as a result. That baby is Geoff Stults, with a generically handsome face but no personality or chemistry with either Rosario Dawson or Katherine Heigl. Audiences wonder why both of these women want him so badly; it’s probably because he owns a brewery and went to Stanford BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DID—that’s the only thing vapid male leads do in movies about the Boring Lives of Rich People Who Want to Sleep Together. The more I think about it, the more this movie is like a soap opera but with none of the entertainment value.


I want to write Denise Di Novi (director) and ask her to send me 6.50 in the mail, plus 6.00 for the popcorn I bought to get through this piece of garbage, since I can’t get the hour and forty minutes of my life back that this movie took from me. The only silver lining in all of this is that I went on the discount night at my local theater—if it had been any other, I would have spent almost double on a ticket to a movie that should only be used as a cure for insomnia.