Memory aka mem-(o)-re aka Memore (2006)
I will watch just about anything with Billy Zane in it (except The Titanic - the ship sinks, get over it) so I thought this horror movie might have something to it. Especially since we also have Dennis Hopper and Ann-Margret in starring roles. As it turns out, this is described as a 'techno-thriller' from the novel by Bennett Davlin, who apparently wanted everything to go his way as he also directed and produced this film on the exploration into the human mind. This was good enough that I'd recommend it for a halfway decent film. Now if you want to see it, careful, the following is full of spoiler alerts.
In Salvador Brazil, an American studying a native tribe is caught trying to sneak out a special powder used by them in ceremonies. He's caught, and a whole boatload of the stuff is blown into his face. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical genius Dr. Taylor Briggs (Billy Zane in a not half bad hair piece) just happens to be in Brazil to lecture on the dynamics of Alzheimer's disease, which his mother suffers from and which he is trying to find a cure for. Afterward he is called to a local hospital to inspect the MRI's taken by a man found unconscious (the man caught by the tribe of course). He sees that there are tumors on the brain, but only on the main places where memory is stored. It's like the man's mind has been erased. The man has a sort of duffel bag and Taylor looks through it - wearing gloves. But he pricks his finger on something sharp. He then finds a bag with a sort of powder in it, but no one has any idea what it is.
That night in his hotel room, he is about to shower when he begins to hallucinate. He's in a lake, seeing a cloaked figure on the shore and swims to it. He starts chasing the figure down, even seeing a car and noticing several landmarks while he's doing it. Just when it seems he'll catch the figure he comes to - he's in the bathtub, having spent the night in it under the shower (that must have been really cold). He's scared because now he spots a rash on his finger where it was pricked in the hospital. He goes back to check on the patient - the man has already died. He sneaks the man's effects out of the hospital to check on it's contents some more. We get into the theory that powder of the pineal gland of the brain, DMT, is a powerful hallucinogen and could cause 'inherited memories'.
Back in Boston, he continues to have random hallucinations, occurring at no particular time or place so he's always messed up by the time he comes to. He keeps seeing the same figure, and now he sees that that figure has been capturing little girls. Taylor is scared that what happened to the man in Brazil will happen to him but the amount in him is too small to cause permanent damage. At first I thought this was going to be a 'gee I've found a miracle cure for my mom' kind of movie but nope - she and the Alzheimer's angle seems to be dropped for the rest of the movie. During one hallucination, he thinks to pick up a newspaper in the car he keeps seeing and it is new, printed before he was even born. So this is all happening in 1971 (way to fudge on your age there Billy) and this killer has been committing these crimes then and, it seems, ever since. Why is he having these memories? The theory is that people carry the chromosomes of their parents, so maybe they also carry part of the memories. Umm, okay. That's why it's called fiction. Anyway, he begins to wonder, since he never knew his father, if that is who the cloaked killer is.
He then sees a painting that depicts the hooded figure almost exactly as he's seen it. The artist is Stephanie Jacobs (Tricia Helfer) whom he starts a relationship with. He has also stayed very close to Dr. Max Lichtenstein (Dennis Hopper) sort of a father figure, and a good friend of his mother Carol Hargrave (Ann-Margret). He finds some old photographs, and notices one with someone cut out of it - except for a distinctive pair of red tennis shoes. He notices that Max owns and still wears those very same shoes and he's scared that he's found his killer. And time is ticking, because the girls have continued to vanish over the years, and another is missing now. Through his hallucinations, he concludes that the killer takes a girl and substitutes the previous girl to be found and assumed the one now missing, making sure the corpse is unrecognizable, the pattern continuing throughout the years.
But you know movies (and suspense novels) being what they are, there's got to be that final twist. The truth comes out when Max is killed and Taylor is framed for it. He runs to Carol's house to make sure she's all right. She is anything but all right. He finds a maze of maniac nonsense, and a room filled with wax life-size dolls, depicting the girls killed - just as he had seen in one of his hallucinations. He also finds newspaper articles, birth certificates, adoption papers.... Carol, in 1971, had been a victim of this hooded killer for several years. She managed to kill him, but not before being raped and impregnated. With Taylor. Whom she gave up for adoption to who he thought was his mother. And Max oversaw the whole process. Apparently the whole experience made her massively psychotic. So she kills Max to keep him quiet (Did he know? We aren't told.) and comes after Taylor. Now big, strong Billy Zane seems to have an awful hard time fighting Ann-Margret, that seems to go on a bit long, but finally he injects her with the whatever-it-was that paralyzed and killed the girls that she kept lying around, grabs his girlfriend (forgot to mention she was there captive, sorry) and runs out - but not before finding the missing child she'd 'stored' in a freezer (how she didn't suffocate I dunno)...
In Salvador Brazil, an American studying a native tribe is caught trying to sneak out a special powder used by them in ceremonies. He's caught, and a whole boatload of the stuff is blown into his face. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical genius Dr. Taylor Briggs (Billy Zane in a not half bad hair piece) just happens to be in Brazil to lecture on the dynamics of Alzheimer's disease, which his mother suffers from and which he is trying to find a cure for. Afterward he is called to a local hospital to inspect the MRI's taken by a man found unconscious (the man caught by the tribe of course). He sees that there are tumors on the brain, but only on the main places where memory is stored. It's like the man's mind has been erased. The man has a sort of duffel bag and Taylor looks through it - wearing gloves. But he pricks his finger on something sharp. He then finds a bag with a sort of powder in it, but no one has any idea what it is.
That night in his hotel room, he is about to shower when he begins to hallucinate. He's in a lake, seeing a cloaked figure on the shore and swims to it. He starts chasing the figure down, even seeing a car and noticing several landmarks while he's doing it. Just when it seems he'll catch the figure he comes to - he's in the bathtub, having spent the night in it under the shower (that must have been really cold). He's scared because now he spots a rash on his finger where it was pricked in the hospital. He goes back to check on the patient - the man has already died. He sneaks the man's effects out of the hospital to check on it's contents some more. We get into the theory that powder of the pineal gland of the brain, DMT, is a powerful hallucinogen and could cause 'inherited memories'.
Back in Boston, he continues to have random hallucinations, occurring at no particular time or place so he's always messed up by the time he comes to. He keeps seeing the same figure, and now he sees that that figure has been capturing little girls. Taylor is scared that what happened to the man in Brazil will happen to him but the amount in him is too small to cause permanent damage. At first I thought this was going to be a 'gee I've found a miracle cure for my mom' kind of movie but nope - she and the Alzheimer's angle seems to be dropped for the rest of the movie. During one hallucination, he thinks to pick up a newspaper in the car he keeps seeing and it is new, printed before he was even born. So this is all happening in 1971 (way to fudge on your age there Billy) and this killer has been committing these crimes then and, it seems, ever since. Why is he having these memories? The theory is that people carry the chromosomes of their parents, so maybe they also carry part of the memories. Umm, okay. That's why it's called fiction. Anyway, he begins to wonder, since he never knew his father, if that is who the cloaked killer is.
He then sees a painting that depicts the hooded figure almost exactly as he's seen it. The artist is Stephanie Jacobs (Tricia Helfer) whom he starts a relationship with. He has also stayed very close to Dr. Max Lichtenstein (Dennis Hopper) sort of a father figure, and a good friend of his mother Carol Hargrave (Ann-Margret). He finds some old photographs, and notices one with someone cut out of it - except for a distinctive pair of red tennis shoes. He notices that Max owns and still wears those very same shoes and he's scared that he's found his killer. And time is ticking, because the girls have continued to vanish over the years, and another is missing now. Through his hallucinations, he concludes that the killer takes a girl and substitutes the previous girl to be found and assumed the one now missing, making sure the corpse is unrecognizable, the pattern continuing throughout the years.
But you know movies (and suspense novels) being what they are, there's got to be that final twist. The truth comes out when Max is killed and Taylor is framed for it. He runs to Carol's house to make sure she's all right. She is anything but all right. He finds a maze of maniac nonsense, and a room filled with wax life-size dolls, depicting the girls killed - just as he had seen in one of his hallucinations. He also finds newspaper articles, birth certificates, adoption papers.... Carol, in 1971, had been a victim of this hooded killer for several years. She managed to kill him, but not before being raped and impregnated. With Taylor. Whom she gave up for adoption to who he thought was his mother. And Max oversaw the whole process. Apparently the whole experience made her massively psychotic. So she kills Max to keep him quiet (Did he know? We aren't told.) and comes after Taylor. Now big, strong Billy Zane seems to have an awful hard time fighting Ann-Margret, that seems to go on a bit long, but finally he injects her with the whatever-it-was that paralyzed and killed the girls that she kept lying around, grabs his girlfriend (forgot to mention she was there captive, sorry) and runs out - but not before finding the missing child she'd 'stored' in a freezer (how she didn't suffocate I dunno)...
Six months later Taylor and Stephanie are living together. She asks him to take some things upstairs for her. He drops the box, spilling the contents (of course). Among pictures and things is a metal bracelet. He had seen this same bracelet in a hallucination of a girl that was captive, but used the sharp end of it to cut her captor and get away by diving off a cliff into a lake. Stephanie had said she almost drowned as a kid and was adopted. He realizes why she painted the mysterious figure - she had almost become one of the victims. He decides not to tell her.
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