Unforgettable

When David Connover (Geoff Stults) takes up with Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson) after his divorce from Tessa (Katherine Heigl), he has no idea what kind of can of mean-spirited worms he's about to open. As this flimsy psycho-sexual thriller begins, battered Julia is being interrogated as the only suspect in the murder of her abusive ex-boyfriend, Michael Vargas (Simon Kassianides), who she once had a restraining order against. Skip back six months to when Julia left San Francisco to begin a new life in Southern California suburb with her new fiancé David and his young daughter, Lily (Isabella Kai Rice). A former Wall Street hotshot, hunky David has just opened a boutique microbrewery, but when icy, embittered Tessa sees how happy David is with amiable Julia, she is devastated. Her vulnerability is heightened because she has never been able to satisfy the expectations of her rigid, perfectionist mother, Helen (Cheryl Ladd). Julia doesn't use Facebook, which is rather bizarre since she was an editor for an online literary publication in San Francisco, but this omission leaves a portal open for Tessa to cyberstalk Julia, shrewdly creating a fake FB profile and utilizing it to contact Julia's ex, as her devious revenge plot takes shape. “Everyone's got a weird ex, but this Psycho Barbie is something else,” warns Julia's best friend (Whitney Cummings). Suffering from an implausibly convoluted script, longtime producer Denise Di Novi's maiden directorial effort is actually fairly forgettable. Optional. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Denise Di Novi. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is a “Reclaiming What's Yours” making-of featurette (10 min.), a deleted scene (2 min.), and bonus DVD and digital copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a lame psychological thriller.] (S. Granger)