This Memory is better forgotten

If you accept the premise of writer/director Bennett Davlin's adaptation of his own novel, our DNA is for the most part made up of our ancestors' memories. To experience those recollections, one need only come into contact with a bit of the mystical Amazonian power that aloof, erstwhile neuroscientist Taylor Briggs (Billy Zane) happens upon when examining a dead patient. After the encounter, Briggs starts having wild dreams in which he and a number of children are being chased by a figure in a cloak and china mask. It turns out that the memories are from one of his kin, probably his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. With a little help from his blazing hot girlfriend (Tricia Helfer, TV's Battlestar Galactica), Taylor traces it all back to a ‘70s-era child serial killer who has never been caught. Looks like it's up to him.

Meanwhile, Ann-Margret and Dennis Hopper, creepy but for all the wrong reasons, play a couple of Taylor's mom's old friends and have a number of Lynchian interludes with him and each other. Though the filmmakers suggest all sorts of possible explanations for what's going on, in a film about a serial murderer that features Billy Zane and Dennis Hopper, and Billy Zane can't be the crazy killer, it doesn't take much to figure out who is. Distributor: Aloha
Cast: Billy Zane, Ann-Margret, Dennis Hopper, Tricia Helfer and Terry Chen
Director: Bennett Davlin
Screenwriters: Bennett Davlin and Anthony Badalucco
Producers: Bennet Davlin, Antony Badalucco and Jesse Newhouse
Genre: Horror thriller
Rating: R for language and frightening images
Running time: 98 min.
Release date: March 23, 2007 NY/LA