Susan Granger’s review of “Memory” (Eastgate Pictures)
If your memories aren’t your own, then whose are they? That’s the dilemma faced by a neuroscientist in this mind-bending psychological thriller.
While lecturing on memory disorders in Brazil, Dr. Taylor Briggs (Billy Zane) is summoned to a local hospital to examine a dying patient who exhibits weird and baffling symptoms. But when Briggs’ protective rubber glove rips, he’s accidentally exposed to a mysterious substance, a reddish powder from the Amazon rain forest. Soon after, Briggs begins experiencing strange, horrific flashbacks; it’s as though he’s suddenly accessed the mind of a demented serial killer who preys on young girls and makes plaster casts of their faces.
As the threads of the pulpy plot unravel, it becomes clear that the powder, a reportedly benign extract from the pineal gland, seems to unleash ancestral memories. But whose memories has Briggs tapped into? All the he can discern is a shadowy figure. Could it be his dead father? Or even his comatose mother, who is afflicted with Alzheimer’s?
To help clarify this dilemma, he turns to a sexy artist girlfriend (Tricia Helfer from “Battlestar Galactica”), his surrogate father Max Lichtenstein (Dennis Hopper) and his mother’s best friend, art gallery owner Carol Hargrave (Ann-Margret).
The taut, supernatural screenplay was written by Bennett Davlin and Anthony Badalucco, based on Davlin’s novel which asserts that 93% of our DNA has yet to be explained. Making his directing debut, Davlin explains that “all the science you see in this motion picture is cutting edge.” Perhaps. But his story is filled with red herrings, his helming is clumsy, and Billy Zane’s intense demeanor is distractingly artificial, despite the efforts of Dennis Hopper and Ann-Margret. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Memory” is a bizarre 5, a haunting hallucination.
