Godsend (2004)
Directed by Nick Hamm
Cloning; Genetic engineering; Genetic memory; Nature/nurture; Thriller
When a couple agrees to participate in an experiment that will provide them with a clone of their dead son, they must face the consequences.
Adam Duncan (Cameron Bright) dies in a car accident the day after his eighth birthday party. When his devastated parents, Paul (Greg Kinnear) and Jessie (Rebecca Romign-Stamos), are approached by Dr. Richard Wells (Robert De Niro), a former professor of Jessie’s, they are shocked and challenged by the doctor’s proposition. Dr. Wells is a fertility specialist who works at the Godsend Institute; he claims he has developed a procedure that can use a single cell from an original subject to create a genetically identical fetus. Wells offers the Duncans the chance to get their son back; he tells them he can inseminate Jessie with a clone “identical to the last chromosome on the last hair” of Adam’s head. Because this science has never been attempted before, and because it is “extremely against the law” and “potentially immoral,” Wells informs the couple they would have to move and discontinue contact with everyone who knew Adam. After much agonizing debate, the Duncans decide to proceed and Jessie is inseminated with Adam’s clone. Dr. Wells describes to the Duncans how all cells are essentially clones of one original cell and how the key to cloning is “artificially stimulating replication” of the stem cell precursor. The cell’s nucleus is then transferred to the mother in the hope that “nature” will then resume its course. They realize that their new son is indeed an exact replica when the newborn Adam takes forty-four seconds to draw his first breath—just as the original Adam had years before.
All goes well for the first eight years of Adam’s life. Paul comments that he is “in some ways so much the same but still his own person entirely.” The only differences are that Dr. Wells is a major figure in this second Adam’s life and his parents worry that their new son may one day discover the truth. Then, the day after his eighth birthday party—the day the first Adam died—things begin to change. Adam begins to suffer from terrifying nightmares in which he sees the first Adam as well as a burning school full of trapped, screaming children. Adam then begins to exhibit strange and sometimes violent behavior. Eventually, he kills a boy in the woods and begins to have fantasies of killing his parents as he continues to be haunted by ghost-like figures. Paul begins to suspect that some of the original Adam’s genes are inactive or “dead” in the cloned son, or that Adam’s cells retained memories of the first Adam’s life. As Wells worries that Paul may go public, he begins to draw Jessie and Adam away from Paul. Then, Adam reveals that the boy in his dream is named Zachary Clarke and begins to sign his violent school drawings by that name. Paul begins to feel increasingly scared and guilty and goes to research the boy and school in Adam’s dreams. Ultimately, he learns that Zachary was Dr. Wells’s son—a troubled boy who burned buildings, murdered his mother, and then died in one of his own fires. When he confronts Dr. Wells, we discover that the doctor inseminated Jessie with a clone mixture of both Adam and Zachary. He took the genes that would determine outward appearance from the original Adam Duncan, but he used his own dead son’s “intangible” genes such as those for memory, cognition and personality. The cloned Adam was indeed suffering from “cell memory” from both of his DNA sources, and he had begun displaying the violent, psychotic behavior of Zachary. Just as Adam is about to murder his mother in an abandoned shack, Paul arrives in time to save her. The film closes with a flash forward to six months later. Dr. Wells has mysteriously disappeared and is shown combing the obituaries—presumably searching for a new, mourning couple with whom he can try his experiment again. The Duncans, who have moved to a new city, are in the process of helping Adam deal with his cellular memories/hauntings through psychological counseling. The ambiguous yet suspenseful ending suggests that Adam is not entirely free of the violent side he gained from Zachary and that, although he has been in a sort of remission, he could strike out at any time.
Evaluation: Although the film is a thriller and so more focused on the suspense and danger resulting from the cloning experiment, the genetic science as well as the biological and ethical consequences of Adam’s cloning are treated in detail. This film provides an entertaining yet in-depth exploration of cloning and its potential consequences.
– Lauren Wood Hoffer