Movie Review: The Messengers

by John P. Meyer

The official tag line for The Messengers, brought to us by Hong Kong creepshow purveyors Oxide and Danny Pang, is rather a long and windy one which condenses down to something like "children can see what adults cannot." (Oh, and by the way, what they see - judging by the fearless, unblinking toddler in this flick - will scare the shorts off you. So wear multiple layers. Depends wouldn't be a bad idea, either, as long as you're dressing to minimize embarrassment.)

I'd like to recommend an alternative mission statement for the film: "The family that pulls together, stays together." Once you've seen the film, let me know which line you prefer, mine or theirs.

The Pang boys made their name with an unsettling little shocker called Gin Gwai (The Eye), about a young female violinist, blind since birth, who receives a corneal transplant which affords her vision - along with something a bit more. The Messengers represents their first Hollywood-sponsored production, with no less a luminary than Sam Raimi credited as producer.

To cut to the chase (or, in this case, the scream), there's nothing much new here either in storyline or technique: it's a fairly standard restructure of the far eastern unquiet ghost model we've come to recognize from entries such as Ringu and Ju-On. However, this year's version is extremely well rendered and - if you're in the mood for unsettling atmospherics interspersed with intense startlement - you can do no better than this.

The soundtrack makes full use of those several dozen underutilized Dolby/THX bass-firing woofers, delivering what amounts to a series of percussive shock treatments whenever a corpse-like limb springs out to grab someone from the audience (I mean, on screen). It should come as less of a surprise that the ghosts - who, after all, are being directed by Hong Kong folks - are of the herky-jerky, crunchy-cracklin', ceiling-crawlin' variety. The only way they might be more cringe-inducing is if the Pangsters had wallpapered the place in chalkboard so those ghoulish fingernails could scrape across them.

The story involves a family under internal pressure (well, two families, actually) who move out to a deserted rural North Dakota property to start fresh. Although, once you've glimpsed the bare barnwood ruin of a house they're moving into, you'll wonder how they got the idea that anything "fresh" could result from such a relocation.

Dylan McDermott (headman of The Practice, in his halcyon days) stars as Roy, dad of the family, who decides he wants to get in on the burgeoning and lucrative sunflower farming industry, as opposed to, say, collecting cans in his family's former home town of Chicago. Along for the ride are his wife, Denise (Penelope Ann Miller, looking good in loose summer dresses); his teenage daughter, Jess (Kristen Stewart); and his three-year-old son, Ben, who's been through some trauma recently and as a result has quit speaking. But he still knows how to point...

It's the presence of Jess in the household that will suggest to classical students of the poltergeist phenomenon (and I'm referring to the "real" version, rather than the one popularized by Tobe Hooper) that that's exactly what's at work here - particularly after she seems to be the focus of a house-clearing smashup of furniture and decorative items with no visible agent to blame. But - unsatisfactorily, as far as this viewer is concerned - the genesis of the hauntings ends up being more like a blending of oriental angry ghosts with sublimated pubescent sexual energy. Oh, and there's the little kid thrown in for good measure: presumably, he's the most open-minded of the lot, and thus the first one in the family to sense the paranormal events going on in the house.

Into this little Twilight Zone/Green Acres scenario strides the rugged John Corbett (Sex and the City's Aidan Shaw, but still best-known to many as DJ Chris Stevens from Northern Exposure), unleashing a timely pump-action shotgun fusillade to spare Roy from the ravages of some Hitchcock-aggressive crows. He's looking for work, and although Roy can only afford to offer him room and board, there's those comely womenfolk roaming the property, so (he probably figures) what the heck?

(NOTE to Roy: when hiring wandering strangers as live-in laborers, it's typically a good idea to ask for references beyond the basic ability to pull a trigger.)

How they (the Pangs) got little Evan Turner (as Ben) to act as if he's seeing things coming out of the walls and crawling across the ceilings is a directorial technique that should be guarded with care; however it was achieved, Evan (or is it Theodore? Both are credited for the role - they must be twin acting toddler brothers!) is utterly convincing when his big brown eyes glance off over the shoulder of his mom or sister (whoever happens to be holding him) and light up with wonder at the sight of something otherworldly.

WORDS TO LIVE (AND DIE) BY?: "I know it's a bit run down, but wait 'til you see the inside!" - Roy to family, on their first sight of the new homestead.

RUN, DENISE, RUN!: "I've been reading the Farmer-Sutra..." - Roy to Denise.

GOOFIEST PLOT ELEMENT (and yet entirely understandable in light of watchdog groups such as SPCA and PETA): Instead of actually shooting AT the crows eating up their dearly-bought sunflower seed, the screwball farmers just blaze away at the ground, using that expensive shotgun ammo for noisemaker purposes.

DISCLAIMER: No actual dogs were modified in any unseemly or demeaning way in order to use the word "watchdog" in the statement above.