After seven years served in Director Jail for The Cell, one of the most incomprehensibly awful films of the last decade, Tarsem Singh has been released back into the Hollywood system. He will direct The Unforgettable, which is based on a video game called The Condemned: Criminal Origins. Just to confuse the issue, the film adaptation of this game was initially known as Species X. Nice to see Warner Brothers is running through the studios’ collective surplus of alternate titles. Why not just dub this fucker Pacific Air 121 and call it a day?
According to The Hollywood Reporter (by the way, I’m as good on video games as I am on comic books), The Unforgettable is about "a cop who in the course of a murder investigation realizes that he is not human and uncovers a war between good and evil aliens." Why is it I feel like I’ve seen this movie before?
And yet I can’t dismiss this film outright because it’s written by The Shield‘s Kurt Sutter (he’s also one of several writers attached to The Punisher: Welcome Back Frank; by the way, without The Shield, that would make him exceptionally easy to dismiss). Though I’m sure this is a total pre-strike paycheck gig, who’s to say Sutter won’t bang out something halfway decent? The real wildcard is Tarsem, who was one of the most sought-after directors of his era before he bottomed out with The Cell. He was something of a music video pioneer back in the day (he won all kinds of awards for "Losing My Religion"). Then again, he also directed The Fall, which has been languishing without a U.S. distributor for close to a year. Don’t get too accustomed to that freedom, Tarsem.