Forget Me Not will not be forgotten

If you like watching former Disney kids doing the complete opposite of everything we came to know and love them for, then this movie is for you. OK, OK, so there are only two of them and they are from completely different generations of Disney channel, but it was still intriguing to see people I grew up watching in less than G-rated situations now in R-rated ones. It also really has nothing to do with the plot of this movie at all, and I’ve officially crossed the border into ranting, so I digress.

(I’ll leave you wondering what Disney kids went bad in this movie for a little longer.)

Let me just get this out there right off the bat so there is no confusion over what you may be getting yourself into if you sign up to watch this movie: Forget Me Not is a stereotypical teen horror flick when it comes to the old tropes they use.

Girls in bikinis? Check

Underage drinking? Check

Sexual exploits of minors? Check

Vacations to remote locations that lead to bad news bears? Check (kind of)

You would think that this whole movie would just be something that is overplayed and stale. But despite the utilization of all the cliches in the book, the monotony ends there.  The entire concept that Forget Me Not is built around is an extremely fresh and unique idea that really caught me by surprise.

I watched this particular movie on Amazon Prime, and the synopsis left a lot to be desired, so I was more or less going into it blind.

The premise is this:

Sandy, who is played by Carly Schroeder, aka Melina from Lizzie McGuire, is that girl at their high school.  She is smart and beautiful and has a large and tight knit group of friends that most people are never lucky enough to find in high school.  Her little brother Eli, who is played by Cody Linley, aka Jake from Hannah Montanna (that’s right, ladies, Heartbreak-Jake is playing a dorky little brother and does an amazing job of mixing adorable and awkward), is a boy genius who skipped a grade, is graduating a year early with his big sister and is valedictorian of their class.  Cue-bad boy boyfriend of Sandy who is the son of the town sheriff and has a little sister who needs some serious behavioral therapy, throw in a couple more hot girls and a cheating boyfriend and you’ve got the perfect summer chick flick, right?

Wrong.

The conflict really arises when the group decides to go to a local graveyard and play a game that is very reminiscent of the old gym-class game that we all used to play in school, Ghosts in the Graveyard. A mysterious girl shows up and requests to play with them, stating it is her “favorite game.” The game springs into full effect and results with our mystery character winning. When Sandy runs after her and announces that she is the winner, the girl asks, “Do you remember me?” when Sandy does not tell her yes, her reply is “You will” before diving off a cliff.

Suddenly Sandy’s friends begin to die off (in true teen horror-flick fashion), but there’s a catch: Sandy is the only person who remembers her friends ever even existed after they’ve died.

I will end my own synopsis there before I give too much more of the film away, and I will tell you what I thought about it.

Despite the cliches and tropes they used to try and pull people into this movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it for what it was. I was not going into it expecting to see something amazing or to find my new favorite horror movie, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I did find. It wasn’t as scary as I would have hoped for, but the ghostly apparitions of their dead friends that appear right before another one is killed off were creepy enough to stick with me when I was falling asleep alone in my dorm before my roommate got back. Director Tyler Oliver married the cliches well with the unique premise he and the writers developed.

I think that this is a horror movie that even some of you who don’t enjoy horror movies could get on board with.

What do you think about the utilizations of cliches and overused tropes in the horror movies? Do you think it can work? What movies have you seen that do this well?

Forget Me Not Wiki

Forget Me Not IMDB

Forget Me Not Trailer: