WARNING: Contains spoilers.

I watched this flick for the first time yesterday, and I've finally come to a final opinion: it's ok. Of course, saying "it's ok" and leaving it at that is pretty worthless, so allow me to explain myself.

Let me begin by saying I felt the movie did a good job setting up the conflict and creating a complex and interesting plot line. Pretty much until the end, I was unsure if Julianne Moore's character was out of her mind, or the victim of some government-sanctioned conspiracy. (Of course, the only reason I was still unsure of Moore's sanity was because her conspiracy theory seemed too easy, but that's not the point) I also thought The Forgotten created a decent, if not overwhelming, sense of suspense and terror. To be perfectly honest, I thought the movie was cruising along just fine until it reached the end.

I had settled back to enjoy and be amazed by a mind-boggling conclusion; I was fully expecting an earth-shattering plot twist to leave me breathless and questioning man's existence on this planet. That's a slight exaggeration, but regardless, the ending failed to meet any of my faintest hopes and dreams. Perhaps my expectations were just too high, but the ending of The Forgotten was boring and unbelievably predictable. The clues you're given to the truth behind the disappearances hold true throughout the end of the film; all is exactly as it seems - the good guys are actually good, and the bad guys turn out to be bad. This lack of depth really robs the film of any powerful suspense.

Maybe I'm just spoiled from better thriller movies, but this movie had no unexpected plot twists, stunning developments, or shocking revelations. In the world of The Forgotten an alien abduction isn't a weird hallucination or a secret government project, but an actual alien abduction. This straightforward approach may have worked in Signs and to some extent, in The Ring, but here the predictable ending is just a yawn.

Is it entertaining? Yeah. A great film? Not really. The Forgotten is probably worth a rental, but don't pick it up expecting anything too special, it's really just "ok." A viewer looking for real other-world thrills would do better to rent a season of The X-Files.