Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) is a woman obsessed with the memory of her little boy Sam, who was killed in an aircraft accident a little more than a year ago. She keeps pictures of him around, watches videotapes of him, checks through his drawers, and spends much time in therapy with Dr. Jack Munce (Gary Sinise) trying to outlive the memories. Then, suddenly, the pictures start disappearing the videotapes go blank, and even her husband seems to have forgotten that Sam ever existed.

In a park she meets (or re-meets) Ash (Dominic West), who spends his evenings drunk, for reasons even he can’t understand. Only Telly remembers that she has met Ash before — he was the father of Lauren, a close friend of Sam’s who died in the same air crash. But Ash no longer remembers that there ever was a Lauren — until Telly finds a way of proving her one-time existence to him. By which point, both of them are being chased by agents of No Such Agency, for reasons they can’t understand.

By the second half of the movie we have moved into X-Files territory, almost literally. It seems that there are Those Who Are So Far Superior To Us that they can use human beings as lab rats, and Telly in particular is a most interesting lab rat. All of which means that I don’t want to describe the plot of the movie any further (for fear, perhaps, of being snatched out through the roof of my house at supersonic speeds). The role played by the NSA is not well-explained (basically, it seems they run interference for the aliens, to keep them from doing worse things). Keep an eye on Linus Roache’s character, generally referred to as “A Friendly Man” in the credits; this description is perhaps as accurate as the name “Sheener”, which is applied to him, if indeed he is a “him”. I will complain about the sudden disappearances of Munce and detective Pope (Alfre Woodard), who are both likeable characters and who could have contributed more to the ending. That ending strikes me as a violation of the background of the rest of the movie (which presents the aliens as having no more compassion for us than we might have for a lab rat — though there is that old joke about lawyers and lab rats, after all ^[1]). Nonetheless, the movie is not uninteresting, and X-Files fans in particular may find it quite enjoyable.

⁽¹⁾ Q: Why do scientists now use lawyers in experiments instead of lab rats? A: (a) Some scientists develop a compassionate relationship with their lab rats; there is no chance of this happening with lawyers; (b) There are some things that even lab rats will refuse to do.