Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It was a'right, July 29, 2007
This PG-13 mess is what happens when you try to make a horror film for a general audience. Basically what its about, is a small family who moves to North Dakota to start over. They move into a very creepy farmhouse (seriously a coat of paint would do wonders for the place), and the father sets about growing sunflowers. The father is attacked by crows and befriends a drifter who becomes a hired hand. Soon, the teen daughter begins to see ghosts, and the house's original occupants make their displeasure known.
It started off okay, but I'm a bit bored with 'the grudge-style' ghosties. The creepy little kid ghost crawls around the house got a bit boring.The teen girl is an unsympathetic young thing who we are supposed to feel sorry for, but quite simply don't. the handyman was the only interesting character.
One thing I dislike in modern horror films is how murderous the ghosts are. There was no reason for the ghosts to try to attack and kill anyone. They hadn't done anything. I just don't buy homicidal child ghosts when the children weren't homicidal in life. Meh. 3 stars. Average pg-13 fair. Nothing to see here, folks.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Atmospheric Horror Movie With A Real Creepy Vibe, March 16, 2007
Most people have probably heard of the idea that babies and young children can see and hear things that older people can't, or have lost the ability to. That a baby in a crib gurgling and laughing at the ceiling, for example, is actually talking to a spirit there. It's a fascinating premise, whose application to a horror movie is a stroke of genius.
In "The Messengers" a family moves into an old farmhouse where something very bad once happened. Only Ben, the little toddler of the family, can see the supernatural prescences in the house, and he appears more delighted with them than afraid. When his teenage sister Jess also starts encountering unusual occurences - this time of an apparantly non-benevolent nature - she also begins noticing Ben's unusual behavior as well and realizes that he too is experiencing something out of the ordinary; the hard part after that is getting anybody else to take her seriously. The movie utilizes much more atmosphere than action, and the cast has to carry off a lot the show by reacting to very subtle (Most of the time), slow-paced, occurences, in a way that makes it feel real and frightening. The actors and actresses were well picked for their parts, and Kristen Stewart as Jess and twins Evan and Theodore Turner as Ben, playing the characters who experience most of the strangeness in the movie's early, slower-going, parts, are especially impressive. All the production values necessary to make this kind of atmosphere work - the light and shadows, the subtle use of sounds, the camerawork, etc. - are all handled very well too.
In the last one third or so of the movie, as things start to speed up and secrets come to light, I guess you could say that there were too broad directions it could have gone in, that it had to choose from. Myself, I would have chosen the route the movie didn't take, but it handles the path it chooses so well that it avoids slumping into a letdown. (I am still curious, though, what it would have been like if they had gone that other way) It's worth noting that when it ended I was rather taken aback that it was over so quick. Its running time is something like 85 minutes, but it felt like it came it at under an hour - and that's even in light of the slowly building pace it maintained. It must have been doing something pretty right to make time fly like that (on the other hand, I've seen other movies of about the same length that seem to drag on for hours). "Messengers" could have actually been quite a bit longer without hurting itself one bit; and as good as the ending turned out to be it may have been even better if it had gone on that different turn, but there's no point in complaining with something this good. Highly, highly recommended for fans of "Dark Water", "The Eye", "Haunted", "The Sixth Sense", "Pan's Labyrinth" and other atmospheric horror movies. "Red Rover" is another, far less known, movie that also fits great in this vein that you might want to check out.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Um... Blah, March 6, 2007
This movie is very blah. Okay, maybe it's not quite blah in the beginning, you may actually be somewhat thrilled, you may clutch your seat a little bit in the theater, your heart might pound, but once it comes down to it, you'll be disappointed. Most horror movies are like this today. Nothing's original in the horror genre anymore. What's good about this movie are the performances. I'll give it that. Plus that little boy is adorable. What's not to like when the mom asks, "What do they look like?" and he pulls his eyelids down? That's cute. Come on.
Here we have a family that moves into a super creepy house so they can live happily and plant sunflowers. The teenage daughter is a bit of a troublemaker, and it's revealed halfway in that she seriously screwed up at one point and is part of the reason they moved in the first place. The movie begins, however, with a different family being murdered by what appears to be shadowy, ghosty figures in the house the new family moves into. The girl keeps seeing things, and so does her little brother. No one else, apparently, notices these things, these scary creatures that crawl on the ceiling or lurk under the sheets. Then John Corbett comes and is all like Grizzly Adams and Mr. Handyman. He's important. Keep him in mind. So whatever happened to that family that used to live there? Why are the haunting her? Why can no one else see them? Is she nuts?
You'll see. That's all I say. No matter what I say, if you want to see this movie, you'll see it. And I say, go for it. It's not bad, but it's not great either. It's decent for a thrill, but short on character and relly short on the scare-factor at the end.
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