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‘Mothman’
prophecies unfulfilled Find a story about paranormal activity, fix it up for Hollywood and end up with blockbuster entertainment. The formula worked on television, but Sony mostly missed the target with “The Mothman Prophecies,” opening in movie theaters today. Richard Gere plays John Klein, the star reporter for the Washington Post. Everything seems to be going right for him until his happy life is shattered. John and his wife Mary (Debra Messing from “Will and Grace”) are driving back after purchasing their dream house. Mary swerves to avoid hitting ... something ... and loses control of the car. Several years later, and several hundred miles from his original destination, John finds himself in a small community in West Virginia where the inhabitants have been seeing and hearing very strange and scary things for quite some time. John decides to dig deeper into the events, and with the help of local police Sgt. Connie Parker (Laura Linney) he realizes that all the strange occurrences may be related to each other and to his own odd car accident years earlier.
It sounds like a typical thriller or science-fiction fare from the movie studios, but “The Mothman Prophecies” is based on true events. And in this case, the truth is much stranger than the fiction Mark Pellington directed. The movie is based on a book by John Keel detailing the series of strange events that took place over several years in Point Pleasant, W.Va., in the late 1960s. A large number of UFOs were sighted, people had visions of disasters that came true and a tall, winged creature with glowing eyes was spotted by many people in the community. The creature was not seen in Point Pleasant again, and all the other odd events stopped the night the town’s Silver Bridge collapsed and 46 peopledrowned. While the cinematography and the other artistic elements of the film are impressive, the story itself leaves much to be desired. People have always been fascinated by the paranormal, but “The Mothman Prophecies” falls flat. The Mothman is never seen in the movie, but is rather remembered by witnesses and seen in crude sketches. The absence of a Mothman leaves a gaping hole in the film. The end result is a movie whose trailer has more suspense than the film. Until the bridge collapses, easily one of the best scenes in the entire film, “The Mothman Prophecies” unfolds like “The X Files” on Prozac. Kristina
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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