The Messengers (2007)

Review

Roy moves his family - wife Denise, teen daughter Jess, and mute son Ben - from Chicago to an isolated farm in North Dakota. Seems due to a couple of hard years the family haven't got a cent to their name but have managed to purchase a farm with Roy ploughing everything into a sunflower crop. Oh, and there's some unexplained trouble Jess got into in Chicago that adds some tension to the family dynamic - Jess and Denise can't be in the same room without getting into an argument. Roy hires a farm worker named Burwell who, because this is a Hollywood movie, will work for food and lodgings.

Pretty soon after moving into the dilapidated farm house, which is remarkably clean and tidy inside considering it has been abandoned for five years, Ben starts noticing the odd ghost lurking around the place and moving in a sort of jerky Grudge fashion. Jess becomes aware of them too, and after being attacked by the murderous entities demands that the family move before its too late. Naturally neither Roy or Denise believe her, putting it down to teen angst, the result of her troubles in Chicago. Excellent medical facilities for such a small town by the way, the doctors and nurses couldn't diagnose a barn door if it fell on them. Did I mention crows play a big part in this movie? Oh well, never mind cause I'm not going to delve into the final act anyway, watch the movie to catch that example of cinematic illogic.

Danny and Oxide came to prominent notice in the West through their excellent ghost story The Eye. Of course, they had made a few other movies but that's not of interest to us. I remember getting excited back in the day when Ghost House Pictures (GHP), Sam Raimi's company, announced the Pangs were on the move to the U.S. and would be directing an upcoming ghost story named The Messengers. A heck of a lot of anticipation was generated via the horror press, who for once got their facts right and didn't post idle speculation by some twelve year old in Buttwipe Ohio, with The Messengers becoming one of the must-see movies of 2007 for genre fans. Then the movie landed on North American screens followed by it getting ripped a new one by all and sundry in the horror review business. Actually just checking, nope it's not a Newline flick so a certain fat ginger twat probably gave it a bad review, assuming of course GHP didn't throw the dog a bone. Naturally, since it didn't explode through the roof box-office-wise in North America The Messengers didn't get a theatre release Downunder and I had to wait on the R4 DVD to arrive. It's been sitting on my desk gathering dust for quite some time now, but since Halloween is almost upon us and I have to make my recommended viewing list shortly I thought I'd better check it out. Oh boy, talk about putting out the fires of excitement, The Messengers is an unmitigated disaster!

The Pangs start their movie in a sort of washed out black and white way, guess they were trying for that old footage look. An unseen demonic force erupts into a farmhouse and proceeds to kill an unnamed mother and her daughter, and a young boy is left cowering in terror in a cupboard under the kitchen sink. Note the daughter is dragged into the cellar and leaves finger nail marks on the floorboards as she disappears into the darkness. I figured the marks on the floor would be a plot device that would surface with importance later, but brother, if only I had known. It should also be pointed out that the deaths go down off camera as GHP ensure a PG13 rating. The opening scene ends with a hand suddenly zooming into the kitchen cupboard and grabbing the boy. Stylish, quick cut, the opening makes its point without belabouring anything and eroding viewer interest. Scene set, the house has an apparent demonic history, let's hit the present and let the festivities begin.

As soon as we get to the present The Messengers quickly falls apart and becomes another convoluted U.S. studio flick with no redeeming features. The Pangs are trying their best, we get some panoramic shots going down, good use of track cam, and the use of crane cam for overheads reminded me of Argento at his best. Danny and Oxide have this cow on a leash and are milking it for all it's worth. I was grooving to the sheer artistry of the filming going down and failed to notice the stress fractures starting to appear in the first third of the movie.

The Pang brothers singularly fail to provide the scares the audience is expecting. It's a ghost story with revenants, we have an old rundown two story farmhouse, Jess and Ben are quite happy to wander around after dark and root around in the cellar (never a good idea in a horror situation folks), so where are my boo scenes and my out and out creepy atmosphere? Danny and Oxide fall into the trap of delivering their shocks as jump scenes identifiable via the score suddenly picking up in tempo and threatening to rupture your eardrums. So we get barely seen shapes rushing past the camera in either foreground or background (come on dudes, even the Asylum is using that technique currently), sudden invasion of the frame from the sides, and the by-now trope ghosts who do the funky stop motion movements. Even more problematic, the Pangs go for false scare scenes. Besides being irritating by their very nature of trying to con the audience, the modern savvy horror mob are well aware that following a false scare scene there is always going to be an injection of a sudden jump scene. This by the numbers approach isn't working any more - time to move it up a level ala Neil Marshal's The Descent, which played with audience expectations. It might have been due to my general irritation with the mess I was seeing on screen but I also felt that the Pangs dragged out their false scares way too long to have any effect. For example, late one night Jess has Ben in her arms downstairs and is trying to do who the flock knows or cares. Ben is pointing over Jess's shoulder to a shape in the hallway that Jess can't see due to her back being turned to the ectoplasmic vision from the other side. The Pangs keep cutting between Ben's pointing finger, the barely visible shape from an angle over Jess's shoulder, and Jess's eyes. The problem here is they keep repeating this sequence of shots till the audience is throwing rotten fruit at the screen and demanding its money back. You could probably go make a cup of coffee, grab another brew from the fridge, or pour another glass of wine while the Pangs continue cycling through their never-ending sequence. Naturally when Jess turns around there is nothing in the hall wall, queue the dramatic music, and oh hey, is that a jump scene lumbering over the horizon?

If expecting something new from the Pangs then you will be disappointed; there's nothing original in The Messengers. The usual suspects are dragged onto screen from movies like The Grudge, The Sixth Sense (can I have a "I see dead people" everyone), and The Others. I was even shocked to see the Pangs channelling the obscure direct to TV Aussie haunted house flick 13 Gantry Row (scene of the stain on the wall that has its own nasty surprise, shot before Downunder folks).

A slight digression here folks, skip to the next paragraph if you want to. While researching how in hell The Messengers went off the rails with Danny and Oxide at the helm I kept coming across people stating that the film ripped stuff from The Amityville Horror. I'm assuming here that it's the remake people are talking about, and can kind of see where they are coming from. The Messengers' revenants make about as much logical sense as the ghostly Jodie from the remake of The Amityville Horror. In both cases the spooks don't act in any internally logical fashion and change agenda to suit script requirements. If they do mean the original then they are falling into what I call "The Exorcist Trap". Whenever a horror flick involving demonic possession is made, half-arsed reviewers start comparing it to The Exorcist in some strange alternative reality where there never was a demonic possession-based movie before Faulkner's classic heavy hitter. Sorry, just because it has a possessed kid in it doesn't mean the filmmakers are channelling Regan, they are just working in the same subgenre. A similar trend can be seen with comparisons of haunted house tales to the original The Amityville Horror. Lazy reviewing folks, nothing more, nothing less.

Back to the grind.

At about the hour mark (at least the movie rocks along kids), I finally worked out what was irritating me the most about The Messengers. The cutting between scenes was amateur at best and judging from The Eye well below the Pang brothers abilities even on an off day. Something was ringing alarm bells in my ears and I hit the net to found out what it was. A quick search of a number of horror sites elicited the news that GHP were unhappy with the Pang brothers' movie and enlisted another director to reshoot scenes, with the post production team having a high old time in the cutting room. That would explain some of the fly shots in the otherwise malaise of ineptitude that is The Messengers. Somewhere in this mess is the movie the Pang brothers made waving its hands while the flick drowns. Hollywood studios suck when it comes to horror, been saying it for years, and GHP are becoming exhibit A very quickly.

The final third of the movie skids into a 90 degree tail spin, crashes through the safety barrier, goes off the mountain road, and bursts into flames on the rocks of complete schlock below. Whoever devised the resolution needs to be taken out behind the sheds and summarily executed for their crimes against modern cinema. We get the introductory scene revisited, this time with an entirely different meaning (rewriting history doesn't work, Hollywood screen writers should know this by now along with a certain forum company). A complete change in the personality of one of the characters, brought about implausibly by an attack on the character by a murder of crows. But what the hey, let's channel Hitchcock while we are in the middle of reshooting Kubrick's The Shining. All that The Messengers needed was a school jungle gym playing host to increasing numbers of crows. Actually, keen observers will also note The Messengers rips off the Russian classic Night Watch with this scene. And finally, we have the complete and utter irrational actions we would expect from Hollywood characters in a horror flick, that hadn't been exposed previously in the movie. The icing on top of this particularly poo cake is Roy knowing the name of another character that he hasn't actually met before. Don't get me started on the ending to this bun fight at the not ok corral - who were they aiming this movie at, the Wyoming chapter of the my little pony club perhaps?

Kristen Stewart (Jess) almost single-handedly stops The Messengers from turning into a complete waste of time. The girl is on form here and delivers on the angst ridden and guilt tripping teen. Unfort we have later learnt this is the only role she can play, hence she is known as Vanilla on this site. Dylan McDermott (Roy) simply throws his hands in the air like he just don't care, and phones it in from Hawaii. Penelope Ann Miller (Denise) is quite frankly embarrassing and clearly was wondering why the hell her agent talked her into this mess. And finally John Corbett (Burwell) plays it low key, hits all the right emotional requirements, and comes away from the movie with his reputation intact.

In terms of T&A, that's probably included in that "R" rated flick that was next to The Messengers on the horror shelf down Civic. For sure it wasn't included in the flick I just watched.

The score by Joseph Leduc was pretty atmospheric and kind of fit the visual as required. Unfortunately post production destroyed any possible enjoyment anyone might have derive from it.

Ghost House Pictures took the Pang Brothers' movie out into the street, dropped it in the gutter, poured petrol over it, and set it alight. A complete travesty ensues that quite frankly is indicative of the Hollywood Studio system's ineptitude when it comes to getting dark genre flicks onto the screen alive and kicking. If you are going to bring in two Asian heavy hitters then let them do their thing, they may just know what they are doing after all. For me, the movie was summed up when Jess was being dragged down the cellar stairs by ghostly hands, and the movie flashed to a black and white overlay of the teen chick last seen in the prologue, to ensure we equated Jess' current situation to what had happened in the past. Belaboured and totally unnecessary for anyone apart from maybe a twelve year old in Buttwipe, Ohio.

No recommendation on The Messengers, it's another seen it before brought the Tee from a Hollywood studio rapidly gaining a reputation for doing crap PG13 horror lites. I would probably have really enjoyed the actual movie the Pang Brothers made, but then I didn't get the chance to see that flick. The Messengers breaks its own internal logic - why exactly were the revenants attacking Jess again? - and will break the heart of anyone dialling in to see some Pang Bro master filmmaking.