The worst thing about The Forgotten is that it can't be forgotten. Try though they may to shake its haunting memory, those who see this movie will leave with a part of them deeply scarred. The Forgotten is not one of those bad films that simply irritates or discomforts—its' badness sears like hot iron, and its' lack of intelligence seems to cry out in rebellion against narrative coherency. Staring at the flickering image of The Forgotten, you see only a superlatively senseless and silly movie, but the eyes that glare back at you are cold and serious—this movie is somehow unaware of how bad it is. The sad thing is not that everyone will laugh at The Forgotten, but that The Forgotten will have no idea what's so damn funny.

It ought to be a felony for a movie this stupid to take itself so seriously. To watch The Forgotten is to sit in awe as the flimsy, uninteresting plot tailspins into one of the most ludicrous stories ever adapted to film. At that point, The Forgotten is no longer just a miserable failure—it's a throbbing headache that slowly creeps into a migraine as the story progresses. By the time it's over, the film has slipped so deeply into nonsense that the brain screams for mercy. It's hard to tell if The Forgotten will leave any permanent physical damage, but it's painful enough to warrant a trip to the doctor.

I hesitate to call The Forgotten a "psychological thriller," since the word "psychological" would then lose all meaning, but that's exactly what The Forgotten thinks it is. Despite its obvious worthlessness, this film honestly and truly believes that it's both a thrilling ride and a credible insight into the human psyche. The film is, of course, dreadfully wrong about itself. There is nothing of moral or philosophical weight, nor anything frightening (other than its quality) in The Forgotten. It swaggers with the arrogance of a know-it-all, and yet it's more hollow than any movie released this year. But, like any conceited twat, The Forgotten demands attention and respect, a request which can only be met with laughter and a hint of rage.

The Forgotten stars Julianne Moore in perhaps her worst role to date, no small feat considering this year's Laws of Attraction and the sinfully overrated The Hours. Moore plays Telly Paretta, a woman who lost her nine-year-old son, Sam (Christopher Kovaleski), over a year ago in a plane crash, but still can't let go of his memory. One day, when Telly wanders about her house looking at old photos of Sam, she is appalled to find every image of her boy erased from her home—the photo albums are empty, and his toys and other mementos are gone. When Telly interrogates her husband (Anthony Edwards) about it, he claims that they never had a son, that there never was a Sam. Telly's psychiatrist (Gary Sinise) then steps in to explain that Telly has some sort of schizophrenic amnesia, but she refuses to believe that her darling Sam is just a figment of her imagination.

Telly asks all her friends about Sam, but, sure enough, none of them know who she's talking about. But just before Telly begins to reconsider her own sanity, she meets Ash Correll (Dominic West), whose daughter died in the very same crash became and mysteriously erased from her father's life. The two brainstorm about who could have covered up their children's deaths and why, until the NSA begins hunting them down. Now why would the government be after two parents with dead children?

The answer to that is much too humorous and embarrassing to retell here. I will say that it's a twist ending that makes you want to throw something at the movie for daring to make such a stupid conclusion. But the ending revelation is kind of a masterpiece in how awful it is—just when you think The Forgotten can't get any sillier, any crazier, or any more flamboyantly ridiculous, the ending proves you dead, dead, dead wrong. In the final scene where Julianne Moore and a mystery player square off in a vast warehouse, the dialogue becomes so outlandishly slap-your-forehead bad that you expect to see the camera shake because the operator was crying so hard.

Of all the stupid things that happen in The Forgotten, the worst reveal themselves when some character "knows too much" about the government cover-up. As soon as someone (who's not Julianne Moore) learns the secret of Sam's obscure disappearance, that someone is neutralized, but not in the way you might expect. Whenever someone is "neutralized," they are sucked into the sky by some sort of vacuum that makes a "shoooomp!" noise and disappear into the stratosphere. That's right. Sucked. Into the sky. I can't really explain who controls the vacuum or why, but rest assured, the image of a human soaring backwards into oblivion is the most unintentionally funny and intellectually crippling movie moment of the year. Whatever sliver of respect we may have had for The Forgotten in the beginning flies away with one fell "shoooomp!"

So I learned something today. Long ago, in a distant month called February, I proclaimed Torque to be the likely worst picture of the year. I realize now that I judged prematurely, and that Torque can no longer hold that honor. When it comes to horrible movies, The Forgotten is awe-inducing. It humbles the soul, mauls the mind, and brings a single, sad tear to the weary eye.