The Mothman Prophecies Review
by Eugene Novikov (lordeugene_98 AT yahoo DOT com)March 18th, 2002
The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
Starring Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton, Debra Messing, Alan Bates. Directed by Mark Pellington. Rated PG-13.
I would like to begin, as I often do, by saying that The Mothman Prophecies represents what is probably my absolute favorite genre, and thus the film I saw perhaps went through a different filter than the one you saw. That said, not every movie that fits into the genre -- that being the slow, tense, subtle supernatural thriller -- will necessarily impress me; I have had my expectations crushed many times by films that simply failed to deliver. This one, impeccably constructed and almost impossibly stylized, does nothing but deliver. It is further proof for the popular contention that good horror movies toy with what we don't see.
The film is supposedly based on true events, though if you really believe that, I have some other things to sell you. It stars Richard Gere, in his first wise casting decision since Primal Fear, as John Klein, a popular Washington Post pundit at the pinnacle of his career. On his way home from a shindig, with his wife (Debra Messing) in the driver's seat, he is in a car accident. But it wasn't a simple lapse of attention or one drink too many that made her careen off the road. She saw something: a shadow, a shape, a pair of red eyes. Having survived the accident, but now diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, she draws pictures of what she saw and creeps out her grieving husband.
John buries his wife and, thoroughly depressed, heads down to Virginia to meet and interview a politician. Suddenly, he finds himself over 100 miles off course, parked in a seemingly random West Virginia town. He knocks on the door of a house to use the phone, and finds himself face to face with a man (Will Patton) who insists that this is the third night in a row he has opened the door to find Klein standing there. He also meets a town cop (Laura Linney), who insists that there is something strange going on; weird sightings, bizarre premonitions, and a generally spooky aura around the town.
So Klein plays Fox Mulder and starts questioning people. Eventually, he contacts an expert named Alexander Leek (Alan Bates), who futilly attempts to explain what exactly is going on; meanwhile, the messages from this mysterious entity become more and more specific and intense, eventually predicting major disasters, until Klein himself gets a phone call...
Director Mark Pellington made Arlington Road, one of my favorite films of 1999, and the two share the theme of terror lurking in peaceful, ordinary suburbia. The Mothman Prophecies, of course, has heavy supernatural elements and is a departure from the more pedestrian, if still brilliant terrorist thriller trappings of the Tim Robbins film. Pellington creates his own universe within the boundaries of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, one of the scariest small towns I've seen in a genre that is obsessed with seemingly ideal small towns.
Honestly, this is tour-de-force filmmaking. How many other directors do you know who can make streetlights swinging in the wind raise ever single hair on the back of the neck? A simple ringing of the phone at one point threatened to turn my stomach inside out. And what a brilliant move to have the protagonist just wind up in a place he has never seen but where the residents claim to have seen him before; a lesser screenwriter would have tried to justify this with some sort of explanation, but the filmmakers here are content with leaving the unexplained alone.
The Mothmen themselves are fascinating, frightening creatures. We never get a concrete interpretation of exactly what they are, but the small hints and quasi-explanations are enough to pique our interest without sending the movie riding off into the realm of the absurd. Though we never see one clearly, Pellington inserts its creepy silhouette (that blotchy thing you may have seen on the poster) into nearly every frame, and its voice on the phone almost chilled my blood to ice.
But I'm a sucker for this sort of thing. The X-Files is my favorite television show. I can't really be objective about a movie like The Mothman Prophecies, except to say that it scared the hell out of me.
Grade: A-
Up Next: The Count of Monte Cristo
©2002 Eugene Novikov
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