Synopsis for
The Forgotten (2004) More at IMDbPro »

Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore) has a missing son killed in a plane crash with 10 other kids on the way to camp. Telly is seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Jack Muncie (Gary Sinise). Telly spends time at dresser every day reminiscing. Psychiatrist suggests she has to let go. The images of son start disappearing. Her husband Jim Paretta (Anthony Edwards) says this is good, she is coming back to reality. The psychiatrist explains her son was manufactured memories after a miscarriage. Telly insists her son was real. Telly goes to Ash Correl's (Dominic West) apartment to convince him that her son, Sam (Christopher Kovaleski) and his daughter, Lauren, played together. Telly found children's painting under his office wallpaper. Dominic turns her in to the police. NSA Carl Dayton (Robert Wisdom) intervenes. Ash remembers. Telly escapes. NSA pursues, but they escape, reunite and discuss alien abduction. NSA pursues and loses them again. Detective Ann Pope (Alfre Woodward ) wonders why the NSA is interested in missing kids. NSA meets Ann. Telly and Ash go to the country cabin and catch Al Petalis (Lee Tergesen) who talks about the experiment and his body explodes. Doc proposes a partnership with Ann to catch Tell. Ann visits country cabin after. Telly and Ash check out Quest Air and go to x-CEO's house which is empty. Ann finds out they scammed the CEO's address on Long Island and heads out there. Ash and Doc leave together, Ash finds the cop (P.J. Morrison) aka airline guy aka parking lot guy aka the alien in his apartment. They jump out window together, Ash gets sucked up and alien disappears. Telly and Ann get together, Ann gets sucked up into the sky. Doc takes Telly to airport and the alien, Doc says finish experiment and the alien says its not over. Telly meet alien and re-imagines Sam who runs, disappears and the alien tells her the experiment was about her. He says Telly must forget or experiment fails. She refuses and the alien gets sucked up. Telly goes home and finds Sam. Telly meets Ash, again. Everything is back to normal.

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Telly Paretta believes that her son Sam died fourteen months previously but her husband Jim tells her that she is delusional. Doctor Munce tells her that she is delusional and imagining a life that never happened after a miscarriage; he recommends that she be sent to a hospital. At this she runs away and meets with a man (Ash) whom she thinks is the father of one of her son's friends. At first he dismisses her and calls the police, but as she is taken away by the feds he also remembers his daughter and rescues Telly; together they escape and go into hiding, pursued by agents.

Telly and Ash capture and torture an agent, who reveals that the agents are merely helping "them" and it is for the protection of humankind. The roof of the house then blows off and the agent is abducted, presumably taken by "them", and the two flee. Eventually, she visits Dr. Munce again- and he reveals to her that the occurring disappearances are the work of 'them', and that the government monitors their trials- aware that they have no power to stop 'them' from doing whatever they want to do.

Eventually Telly hunts down one of "them" in a warehouse and he tells her that she has been a part of an experiment into whether the bonds between mother and child can be broken. Telly refuses to deny her son's existence. She is choked and ordered to give up her last memory of her son, the first time she saw him as a newborn. But she recalls her pregnancy and the being who has been experimenting on her is 'blown away'. She then finds herself living her normal life with her son again, though she remembers everything that has happened.

It is never exactly stated who "they" are, but it can be presumed that they are extraterrestrials because they are immune to bullets and possess advanced technologies.