By Buzz Byrne
If I wrote my review of THE MESSENGERS the way the filmmakers made this movie, I would be fired, sued and disgraced. This movie is for THE BIRDS. Is this THE SHINING example of contemporary PG-13 horror? What is haunting this family? A POLTERGEIST? Is it a PSYCHO with a GRUDGE? The kids in the movie see things the adults don’t. It’s almost like they have a SIXTH SENSE. If you want to be scared, rent any of the movies listed above that this one has blatantly ripped off.
The movie starts with a prologue of the cursed farmhouse that is the setting. We can assume this is a history lesson because it is filmed in black and white. Ah, subtlety. A family is being torn apart by an unseen force. After the final “BOO!” in this sequence, we cut to the new folks moving in. Mom and Dad (Penelope Ann Miller, Dylan McDermott), troubled teen and mute toddler (Kristen Stewart, Evan/Theodore Turner) arrive with muddled family baggage and a dream to restart their lives by growing sunflowers. The horror begins when troubled teen Jess can’t get a cell phone signal … AHHHH!!! That’s about as scary as it gets if you don’t count John Corbett with a mustache, looking like the gay pirate on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers helmet from the 70s. He enters out of nowhere, bringing his hippie vibe from NORTHERN EXPOSURE, to help work the farm basically for free. Yeah, that should turn out fine for everybody.
Crows show up to harass the family. Spooky spirits in the house show up to harass the family. The script shows up to harass the family. This isn’t so much dramatic horror as a nuisance lawsuit waiting to happen. There is nothing
resembling originality in the acting, writing or directing of this mess of a movie. And since this a PG-13 flick, there isn’t much gore, so the thrills are the paint by numbers, jump-at-you-from-corners-and-make-a-loud-noise variety. Even this has the painfully overdone rhythm of tense, tense, TENSE, relief … SCARE! To me: SNORE! The ghosts aren’t particularly creepy. Jess doesn’t make for a particularly compelling hero, and when you have cast of five — four family members and one mysterious stranger — it isn’t exactly brain surgery figuring out which one’s the bad guy who will be chasing everyone with a nasty farm tool at the end.
What happened that Penelope Ann Miller had to be in this? Shouldn’t she have a better career? Or John Corbett or Dylan McDermott? How could Sam Raimi have his name tacked on as a producer? One of the brothers who directed the film is named Oxide Pang. That’s not a director, that’s a side effect from an erectile dysfunction drug. And, I know, I really shouldn’t be throwing stones about dumb names.
The best thing about the movie is that it is only 90 minutes long. The funniest thing about the DVD is that the discs are copy-protected. Yeah, not by any technical coding, but by the script. No one is going to steal it and nobody should bother renting it.