The Mothman Prophecies

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't Get Any Creepier Than This
Review: I already knew of the Mothman story before seeing the movie, and it did not disappoint in the least. You've got to cheer a director who's willing to make a film, where, in the end, nothing is explained. Because it's not. You still don't know at the end what the hell was going on or why anything happened the way it did. And that's fine with me; because it's not the point with this movie. The point was the thrill ride and creepy, paranoid tone that takes hold once Gere ends up in that West Virginia town.

Like he did in Arlington Road, Pellington knows how to make the most out of menacing little details. Whether it's strange lights that appear for a split-second in the sky after Gere's car breaks down, or the blink-and-you'll miss it reflection in a mirror on a door that Gere slams, there's plenty of subliminal stuff here to add to the doom and gloom feel that gets increasingly intense.

If you need your thrillers to go from A to B to C, you may not like the unresolved conclusion, but if you want some real chills--even more chilling because almost all of this stuff really happened--you can't do better than this.

The best scene in the movie involves Gere's character on the phone talking to somebody who may or may not exist, who creepily begins to tell him things about him that nobody could possibly know, and then it accelerates from there. But I won't spoil it for ya! Best scary movie I've seen in years. Read up on the real events if you want to get even more creeped out.

Rating:
Summary: Did Moths Eat the Holes in the Script?
Review: I enjoyed MP. Richard Gere usually picks interesting films. This one is very enjoyable while you're watching it. After the film, it's one where you start asking questions. Why was there a moth in the new house that Gere and Debra Messing bought? Was that the mothman? Was their house haunted? If they hadn't bought that house, would they not have been affected? Was Mary's (Messing) tumor caused by mothman? If mothman comes to predict major dissasters, why'd he bother with this one woman? And that's the first ten minutes. So the plot itself creates some major questions. Will Patton who I've enjoyed on the tv series "The Agency" does a nice job as the half-crazy Gordon who's being haunted by the Mothman. His wife played by Lucinda Jenney also has a nice supporting role filled with emotion. Laura Linney who previously starred in "Primal Fear" with Gere, does a superb job of adding a bit of sanity and humanity to the role of small town cop. Alan Bates is convincing as the paranormal author Alexander Leek. However, when we get to the climax of the bridge collapse, the film unfolds almost as a series of tableaux still shots rather than an unfolding of action. This tends to place the viewer outside the event rather than becoming involved in it. While the film's pacing is not the best, I found it engaging as a mysterious paranormal thriller. While not one I'll want to revisit often, it was a nice evening's entertainment. Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: More Style Than Substance
Review: Mark Pellington's highly stylized MOTHMAN PROPHECIES proves that style can rarely hide the lack of a well developed story, which is the case here. The film is far from bad--it's actually very decent, but could have been far better had the story been a little less cloudy and a little more concise(as it stands, about twenty or thirty minutes of the film could have been utilized to better effect). The catalyst of the story is the frequent appearance of a moth-like creature, who appears to individuals with prophetic declarations of doom. Though we never really see the "creature" per se, the effects of his prophecies drive the plot of the story. Richard Gere underplays well in the lead role, and gets fine support from the always excellent Laura Linney(and thanks to the filmmakers for not following the cliched route and putting these two characters together romantically), Will Patton, and Alan Bates. Again, Pellington's stylish direction doesn't completely save the film, but overall it is more than watchable.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable movie, disappointing DVD
Review: I came to The Mothman Prophesies with a clean slate. I had never heard of what happened in Point Pleasant and so was not expecting a true to life account. Because of that, I was able to enjoy the movie quite a lot. It was creepy and exciting, with a tone of lurking menace. The filming is excellent. A light hand was taken with the special effects and some psychedelic colorings add interest. Many of the events in the movie are on the light-fright side, so lovers of serious horror will be disappointed.

The basic premise is that John Keel, Washington Post reporter, loses his wife to a brain tumor that is discovered after a car accident. The car accident is caused when his wife, who was driving, sees the mothman. Two years later, John takes a 1 1/2 drive, going six hundred miles in the wrong direction to end up in Point Pleasant. There he begins to have strange experiences and hears rumors of others having similiar experiences. This puts him hot on the tail, good little investigative reporter that he is, of the mothman - and perhaps his dead wife. I won't tell you more, except that it is worth watching.

I love that while the various things happen, nothing is flatly explained. We don't precisely what the mothman is, what it's motivations are, or even if it is a creature of good or evil. The uncertainty is lovely!

I detracted one star from the DVD (not the movie itself) because I was sorely disappointed to see that there were none of the juicy extras that I love so much with a DVD. After watching the movie, I was dying to see the cast interviews and what they thought about mothman. I also would loved to have seen at least a brief history of the mothman incidents and the collapse of the Silver Bridge.

Rating:
Summary: Horrible
Review: Not worth a long, well-thought-out review. Avoid at all cost. not scary at all. There is more horror and violence in a Scooby Doo cartoon, then this horrible written movie.

Rating:
Summary: Sleeper!
Review: This movie is excellent. I live 40 miles from Point Pleasant, WV and I remember well the day the tragedy occurred. We had seen local news reports regarding Mothman sightings around Halloween, 1967, but of course nobody took them seriously. After the fact, some believed, but Mothman sightings were never reported again after the event. The movie has some technical glitches; i.e. we didn't have cell phones back then, but the story is well written and highly entertaining. I believe this film was not well advertised, or it would have been a box office hit. I was unaware that Richard Gere was even in it. If you like suspenseful, supernatural films, especially those based on actual events, you'll love The Mothman Prophecies.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad if you came to view as a blank slate....
Review: ...but if you read John Keel's account, or even if you're just aware of the far-edge-of-the-paranormal events that took place in the sixties in Point Pleasant, WV, you'd say, as I did, "but where's the MOTHMAN?"

Many people encountered a very strange being in Point Pleasant and thereabouts, and some extremely strange happenings took place, culminating in the unexplainable collapse of the Ohio River Bridge, but this entire aspect is not dealt with at all in Pellington's account.

Of course, there IS no accounting for what happened in consensus reality terms and, to Pellington's credit, he at least has grasped
that essential fact. But why not at least try and deal in the film with what the townsfolk actually went through? The central fact is that people saw a large being with legs, arms (in some instances, at least), and glowing red eyes... it followed cars at high speeds, with large wings that didn't seem to flap at all! It's clear we'll never know what these events are all about, and Pellington grasps that... so why avoid the central figure of this fringeworld mystery, the Mothman, whatever the Mothman was or represented?

The film stands up fairly well on its own. It's just that the film doesn't exist in a vacuum. In my opinion, it doesn't deserve the right to associate itself by name (and even proclaim "Based on True Events!") and then fail to deal with said True Events.

It's not a bad movie, but it's a fraud.

Rating:
Summary: Watch A Box of Enoz Mothballs Instead
Review: Of course I'll get slammed for this, but I'm prepared. I can't say how boring or how bad and purposeless this film was. Did we really need a big Hollywood "intelligent" horror movie about Mothman out of all things? I was surprised and excited when I first heard that The Mothman Prophecies book was being made into a film. When I heard Hollywood was involved that killed all hopes of mine for this film. We get a Hollywood version about the Mothman legend. I'm glad I did not pay ten dollars at the theater, and I'm glad I got this for free from the local library. This subject would been more interesting if the film was made in the 70's a la Legend of Boggy Creek style. If you people think this is a "terrifying" and "scary" movie then you don't know what a horror movie is. Thanks again to Hollywood for also killing low budget film making. We real movie fans just love you for forcing us to watch your bland and sanitized films with overpaid actors.

Rating:
Summary: What you get with the DVD
Review: This review is intended for people that know about the movie but want to know what they get with the DVD.

I saw the movie in the theater and loved it (but the rest of the people who saw it with me didn't like it). I bought the DVD when I saw it out because I wanted to have the behind-the-scenes goodies you usually get with DVD's. You know, the cool interviews, video footage of the "making of", and all the extra stuff that lets you in on the movie. Well, let me warn you that this DVD is lacking all of that. All you get is a video of the infamous "Half Light" song that plays during closing credits (and the video more or less sucks but the song is good) and some lame production notes. In all, I was very disappointed by the lack of extra goodies that normally accompany a DVD. Even if Sony would have included half of what they had on their movie website it would have been ok, but instead they added nothing. So, you've been warned that you should expect nothing more of value on this DVD other than the movie, which is still a strange but good thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Much better than I expected.
Review: Okay: this is a movie that I had been avoiding for quite some time because of all the poor word-of-mouth it seems to have received. I'm not a fan of Richard Gere, and I do not care for modern fare such as "I Know What You Did Last Summer" or the countless Jason and "Halloween" re-hashings. I am, admittedly, a person that is VERY difficult to please in the whole "horror" experience. That said, I REALLY enjoyed this movie. A lot. Perhaps the fact I wasn't expecting much helped me enjoy it more, but I honestly feel the film's merits had more to do with that than any state of mind I may have been in. This is the first movie in quite some time that has genuinely creeped me out to the point where I actually turned the lights OFF so that I could revel in that all-too-seldom experience. I did not find it slow, or overly-long, or boring in any respect. And I'm not even claiming ownership of a wider than average attention span. My honest opinion as to why so many people seem to have been turned off by this movie is the fact that at some undiscernible point in the movie, it stops being a horror movie and starts becoming something else. A bold move, in my opinion, which unfortunately seems to have alienated the movie-going throngs hungry for your typical violent, bloody, lame climax. "The Mothman Prophecies" is a movie that should satisfy anyone with an imagination who longs for the days when scary movies were actually scary, and should rightfully displease those whose idea of a good scare is only equivalent to the splatter-content therein. Those are my two-bits, thanks for listening.