Godsend

Devoted parents Paul and Jessie Duncan (Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) lose their 8-year-old son in a freak accident. Before the couple has time to bury the lad (Cameron Bright), a persuasive fertility-clinic doctor (Robert De Niro) interrupts their grieving and proposes to clone the youngster. The experiment is illegal (the Duncans must sever all ties to friends and relatives and relocate) and raises several moral issues (the boy is named Adam, in an obvious nod to the godlike creation of life). Strange and ugly things then begin occurring when the rubber-stamp youngster reaches the age that his blueprint predecessor died, in an occasionally suspenseful but more often ludicrous thriller that attempts to give new meaning and horror to the term “bad seed.” Directed by Nick Hamm.