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    The Mothman Prophecies

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

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    “The Mothman Prophecies” is often very interesting and even frightening, it just misses the boat on what could have been a really great thriller because of some pacing issues and an ending that’s a little nutty. Richard Gere stars as newspaper columnist John Klein who early in the film gets into a car accident while his wife is driving. Mary (Debra Messing) swerves to avoid a creature and ends up dying shortly after of a brain tumour. Was it the strange black-winged, red-eyed creature that caused this? Two years later, Klein inexplicably finds himself in the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia when his car breaks down. In the town he finds dozens of reports of people who have seen this “mothman” and he decides to investigate. He teams up with local police officer Connie Mills (Laura Linney) as they document sightings, injuries, hallucinations and finally, strange prophecies foretelling deaths. Klein gets increasingly involved in the cases.

    This movie has a really solid first half. There’s just enough sort-of explainable weirdness going on that you believe this is based on a true story and that Klein would stick around to see what is going on. As he uncovers some clues that may explain what happened to his wife, you start getting a bad feeling about the whole thing. Then we’ve got the creepy reports from people who have seen the creature, a strong message from an expert that warns him to stay away that further peak your curiosity and that increasing dread as you realize this guy is in way over your head. As I said before, it gets downright creepy and frightening when you finally start to learn about this strange “Indrid Cold” character. The unexplainable but kind of mundane stuff just keeps pilling up until you know something really bad is going to happen. Then the second half, the movie really switches gears and doesn’t work nearly as well. It’s like the director couldn’t make up his mind as to whether he wanted to make a thriller that built itself up slowly, setting itself up for some big, but sparse scares, or a nutty supernatural monster movie about a possibly benevolent, possibly maleficent force that we as humans have no way of understanding. It ends up just being a bit of both and not paying off for either camp.

    Some of the problems in this movie are truly hard to describe because they have to do with the jarring switch in tone and atmosphere of the story. There’s a scene where we see a face in a mirror within Klein’s apartment. It should be a big jump scare but because of the tone of the scene and the way it was shot, it’s more of a weird surprise that only creeps you out if you’re fast-forwarding through the film (which is how it got me all creeped out) The movie begins so smart and towards the end, we get yet another movie where the characters in the film have never seen or ready any story where ghosts, monsters or aliens are involved. Klein hears about a prophecy concerning a great tragedy on the Ohio River and like a fool basically runs around screaming, blabbering about doomsday and not even coming up with a clever story to explain why he is acting so weird.

    Despite the missteps along the way, it could have all been wrapped up neatly with a tight ending. One that doesn’t explain too much, leaves enough to the imagination to play with your head and make you wonder if the mothman is still out there kind of thing. In a way, the film actually does have an ending like this that works really well and leaves itself ambiguous without feeling like it’s a cop-out non-ending. It’s a very creepy moment where Klein is waiting for a phone call. I couldn’t make up my mind about what I wanted to see. Did I want him to do the smart thing and tear the phone from its wall, throw it in the trash can and run away with his fingers plugging his ears? Did I want him to answer the phone, regardless of the consequences? Unfortunately, that scene, the film keeps on going. We get a scene with a lot of cool special effects that goes on for way too long, doesn’t belong at all in this movie and unfortunately features horrendous sound editing. You know those three stock screams you hear a lot in movies? We’re talking about the Wilhelm scream, the Howie scream and that third overused one that only belongs in a movie if it’s a joke. Yes, they are all present in the climax and it really hurts the film.

    Overall, “The Mothman Prophecies” isn’t really that bad, it’s just underwhelming. In the end it becomes another one of those spooky, supernatural movies that stayed pretty faithful to the truth except for a few glaring parts that were totally blown out of proportion to make a standard Hollywood story. It’s a nice way to spend two hours though so as a rental or if it’s playing on TV I recommend it, partially because what it does right it really does well and also because there’s enough believable stuff going on here that if you watch it with someone else it will be a lot of fun to discuss. (Widescreen version on Dvd, November 17, 2013)

    5
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    adamwatchesmovies@  1.12.2014 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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