Film Review: The Mothman Prophecies (2002)

over 1 year ago (Edited)

(source: tmdb.org)

At the beginning of 21st Century, thanks to Internet and, at the time still uncensored, search engines, Hollywood found that getting away with certain things was increasingly difficult in comparisons with earlier periods. That included passing fiction as something based on true story, like in the case of The Mothman Prophecies, 2002 horror film directed by Mark Pellington.

The film is actually based on the eponymous 1975 non-fiction book by paranormal investigator John Keel, which dealt with series of terrifying phenomena that took place in late 1960s around Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The script by Richard Hatem, however, switched the plot to present day. Protagonist, played by Richard Gere, is John Klein, Washington Post columnist who, together with wife Mary (played by Debra Messing) intends the buy new house. After seeing mysterious moth-like figure on the road Mary causes car accident only to later be diagnosed by rare and fatal form of cancer. Before she dies, Mary keeps drawing mysterious winged figure. After her death, John forgets the incident but two years later, while driving to Richmond, inexplicably ends up hundreds of miles westwards, in small town of Point Pleasant. There he meets local policewoman Connie Mills (played by Laura Linney), which informs him about all kinds of mysterious and frightening events related to “mothman”, creature from local legends that looks like those from Mary’s drawings. Klein himself becomes witness to those events and begins to investigate them, coming to conclusion that “mothmans” are supernatural beings whose presence predicts future disasters. He becomes convinced that Point Pleasant will become site of such event, but nobody believes him.

At first glance, The Mothman Prophecies looked like a film that could be promising. Urban legends of “mothmans”, relatively recent part of US folklore, have few years earlier inspired “Detour”, one of the episodes of The X-Files, and years later would inspire creators of Fallout 76 video game. As such, “mothmans” were relatively unknown and allowed for more creative freedom, at least those that didn’t take the real events nor Keel’s book seriously. Hatem’s script indeed strays from some of horror genre conventions, maintaining the mystery about strange creatures from the beginning to the end. Unfortunately, this effort isn’t followed by good direction. Mark Pellington, who had success with his previous work, disturbing thriller Arlington Road, seems to be confused with less than clear story, so he tries to compensate it with specific “cool” quasi-Lynchian visual style that ends becoming pretentious and confusing. Audience might be interested in the film’s first half, but in the second script succumbs to conventions and predictability, including the melodramatic finale which has forcefully altered historical facts in order to provide some sort of happy ending to what was real life tragedy. Not even the presence of Richard Gere in one of his more subdued roles, nor always reliable Laura Linney can improve general impression. That impression is even worse after the closing titles that unashamedly contradict the actual history in order to make the film look “cool”. Anyone who actually searches for events in Point Pleasant and compare it with this film would get rather unpleasant impression of being taken for a ride by Hollywood.

RATING: 2/10 (-)