Title: The Messengers Directors: Danny and Oxide Pang Distributor: Ghost House Pictures Release Date(s): February 2nd, 2007 (Theatrical) Score: 7.0 (Out of 10)

THE MESSENGERS Movie Review

T HE MESSENGERS is a vexing film. With such an impressive pedigree, being produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert's Ghost House Pictures and directed by the acclaimed Asian twin-brother team usually referend to as The Pang Brothers", one would expect this movie to be nothing but exceptional. This is not the case. One the one hand, the haunted-house story is just about as generic as one can get. While there is the big twist at the end that has been a requirement of all horror movies since THE SIXTH SENSE, anyone who didn’t see it coming probably shouldn’t have been allowed into the theater because the didn’t meet the PG-13 age requirement. On the other hand, it is an exceptionally well-done generic haunted house story, with some truly beautiful and creepy visual elements that may stay with you long after the movie is done. While the story itself isn’t anything exceptional, the way it is presented is. In the end it is up to the individual to decide if the latter outweighs the former.

The story centers on the Solomon family, who have just uprooted from the big city to get a fresh start running a sunflower farm in North Dakota. The father, Roy (played by Dylan McDermott) feels confident that he can make the transition because he grew up on a similar farm as a kid, and is soon bolstered by nomadic-but-friendly-hired-hand-and-sunflower-farming-expert John (John Corbett). The mother, Denise (Penelope Ann Miller) is not quite as optimistic, being a city lass, but is the ultimate supportive wife (up to the point). The kids don’t get much of a choice; Ben (played by twins Evan and Theodore Turner) is only about three while the teenaged Jess (Kristen Stewart, looking eerily like a young Jodi Foster) screwed up big time back in the city, partially prompting their urban egress. It is around her character that the story centers. As we learn (but the Solomons of course don’t) in a short intro, the farm’s history isn’t exactly all sunflowers and sunshine either. While Jess does her sullen best to make the best of the situation, it soon becomes clear that they aren’t the old farm’s only occupants… just the only live ones. However, it seems that only the young are able to see these spirits in the beginning. Ben can see them all the time, but rather creepily sees the corpse white ground-creepers as some kind of playmate, while Jess can only see them peripherally unless they want her to. In addition, the farm is beset by hundreds unnaturally large and aggressive crows that aren’t above taking chunks out of humans to get to the sunflower seeds. Her parents blow off her insistence that something is supernaturally amiss as a selfish attempt to get back to her friends in the city, completely oblivious to the unnatural happenings around them; even the crows are brushed off as a natural hazard of running a farm with so many seeds, as they are easily scared off by a hired hand firing a shotgun into the air (as John is when we first meet him). The mother is more vexed by the large, dark stain that seems to keep reappearing on the wall of the upstairs bedroom, no matter how many times she scrubs it away (apparently she never saw DARK WATER). Soon, however, things get out of control and the whole family is embroiled in the unholy happenings.

Sounds pretty much like every haunted house story ever, all rolled up into one, right? There are some great elements buried in the dross, however, such as the idea that only children can see the dead, and that Jess, since she is only occasionally able to see them, is caught on the cusp between being a child and an adult. It makes it clear without belaboring the point that part of the conflict here comes from the fact that Jess is not quite a child, but not really an adult either. The family dynamic is also done exceptionally well, really coming across as a loving, normal family doing the best to come out the other side of some hard times. No matter how bad things become, that core of familial love is always there, and is portrayed rather well. The other motif that should appeal to the film’s core demographic (I don’t think that it is a coincident that the movie is rated PG-13 and features a main character just a few years older than that) is that this movie is the perfect metaphor for the fact that teenagers are seeing and feeling things that their parents can’t seem to understand; what is the most important and dire to the them is often blown off by parents as them being overly dramatic and angsty. Like Joss Whedon did with BUFFY being a metaphor for “high school is hell… literally”, THE MESSENGERS uses horror as a way to explore its metaphors by mythologizing and amplifying them. These elements in the film are subtle, and were missed by the more jaded (and, admittedly, less juvenile) press, which in itself kind of supports the film’s metaphor: adults just don’t understand.

But where the film was really exceptional is in its visuals. THE MESSENGERS is directed by Danny and Oxide Pang (by the way; who names one twin something ordinary like Danny and the other one something bizarre like Oxide? It is like naming one Bobby and the other one Angstrom or Turnbelt. Besides, everyone knows that Oxide is a girl’s name), the twin brothers responsible for THE EYE franchise as well as other horror/thriller movies in Hong Kong and Thailand, and their unique visual (and visionary) perspective is utilized to great effect for such an otherwise generic film. The ghosts themselves are more or less the type you’ve been seeing in Asian horror films for a few years now, in movies like THE RING, THE GRUDGE, and, obviously, THE EYE. However, they are presented in an entirely unsettling manner, crawling unnaturally along floors, walls, and ceilings like lizards or bugs. The blocking is also done quite well, keeping the angry spirits off-center and thus mysteriously menacing; they are usually just barely seen skittering in the peripherals of the screen rather than ruining the effect by showing them too clearly. They also did some great work keeping the film visually interesting by giving us slightly twisted and offset camera angles, bright colors standing out visually against muted and ominous backgrounds, or skewed perspective. The computer-generated special effects are also exceptionally well integrated, complementing the film rather than overwhelming it, and blending seamlessly with the real-world elements. But what really stands out are the small elements that are easily overlooked. For example, at one point Jess finds a tiny, childlike drawing of bird in a filthy windowpane, seeming to wonder where it comes from. Minutes later we notice that a picture of a woman has joined that of the bird, even though no one was in the house to draw it. Another beautifully unsettling moment is when Ben is dancing around it the kitchen, laughing and pointing at something on the ceiling. The rest of the family is grinning, wondering what the child’s eyes are seeing that they are missing. But when the camera shows us things from Ben’s perspective, we see that he is reaching up towards a pale, angular corpse, who is reaching down from the ceiling towards the child. There are a few moments like this that are just exceptionally unsettling and well executed. On the other hand, there are many elements that are directly ripped of from other sources, such as the ghosts’ resemblance to those from THE GRUDGE and the obvious elements that scream of THE SIXTH SENSE. One moment, concerning the ominous stain on the wall upstairs, was done incredibly well and is incredibly unsettling… and was stolen almost entire from the video game SILENT HILL 4: THE ROOM. Regardless of where all these elements are stolen from, they are implanted extremely well and the overall feel of the movie is uniquely Pang Brothers.

Unfortunately the acting for the most part was just as generic as the story. Kristen Steward did an admirable job as Jess, but really only ever had to toggle between sullen and scared. Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller gave solid, if unremarkable performances as Roy and Denise, even if Denise’s reactions to the reoccurring stains was a bit over-the-top (I myself have never gasped and looked frightened when seeing water-damage stains on a wall; I live in a house that is over a hundred years old and thus would be scared all the time if this was the case). Then again, maybe she DID see DARK WATER. John Corbett is by turns lovable and a bit creepy as the affable hired hand John. And there was a pleasant surprise in the form of a small role for the creepy-as-hell William B. Davies (Cancer Man from THE X-FILES) as a bank officer who looks like he must moonlight as a funeral director. But for the most part the acting was unremarkable. The standout performances were from the murderous crows, even if they were actually portrayed by ravens; you can tell by the neck ruff and the curved beak, as well as by their size. Crows are too stupid to get work as actors. Except maybe on FRIENDS. Sorry. Anyone seriously interested in the genre has to learn a little bit about its icons. But I seriously digress.

So while on the surface THE MESSENGERS seems like the ultimate in generic, PG-13 horror, there is still a lot there to recommend it, in particular a unique and engaging presentation by the more-than-competent Pang Brothers. And at only an hour and thirty-one minutes, I can see no real reason for horror fans to at least check it out. You have little to lose and may even find yourself pleasantly surprised.