Starring: Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Debra Messing
Director: Mark Pellington
Rated: M15+
The Mothman Prophecies is based on the 1975 book of the same name by John A. Keel, about paranormal activity that was alleged to have taken place between 1966 and 1967.
John Klein (Richard Gere), a journalist at The Washington Post, leaves his job after his wife dies in a car accident caused by her seeing mysterious creatures called mothmen. He investigates the strange reports, including psychic visions and sightings of these winged creatures around Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Some locals think they are signs of an alien invasion of earth. He is joined in his search for the truth by Connie (Laura Linney), the local police sergeant.
Director Mark Pellington made the edgy thriller Arlington Road a few years
ago, but he loses his touch in The Mothman Prophecies. This sci-fi thriller seems to be caught somewhere between being in the horror genre and a long episode of the X-Files. And although it has a great climax at the end, not even Gere and the excellent Linney can save the film from the incoherency of its story.
There are the necessary collection of bad things that only seem to be able to happen at night, with hovering presences, loud bangs and heart beats accompanying all the scary bits, but I became suspicious early on when the first event the mothmen supposedly cause is the downing of Flight 9 out of Denver in which 99 people die. Invert those three numbers and we all know the territory into which Pellington is taking us.
Give me Mulder and Scully any day.
