*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller, John Corbett
screenplay by Mark Wheaton
directed by Danny Pang & Oxide Pang
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Horror is not my area of expertise, but I'm fairly certain that The Messengers barely qualifies for the category. A two-bit riff on Ju-On and The Sixth Sense (themselves worth four bits at best), it's professionally shot and cleanly designed but fails completely to be at all scary or even marginally resonant. Those who recognize and revere the social relevance of genre entries from the '70s will be tearing their hair out at the film's hermetic sealing-away from anything beyond teen angst, with references to no less than the high foreclosure rate in farm country used purely as a plot convenience. (Inexcusable when you consider what sort of eldritch imagery might be wrung from a devastated agricultural wasteland.) What you get from The Messengers are some by-the-book jump-scares, "creepy" imagery that wouldn't damage the average eight-year-old, and a "surprise" ending that any thinking adult will see coming from miles away.
This time the put-upon teenager is Jess (Kristen Stewart), a girl nonplussed, to say the least, at her parents' decision to relocate from Chicago to a North Dakota farm. It's never quite explained how father Roy (Dylan McDermott) expects to succeed when his neighbours are largely unemployed, nor is it explained why a Chicago city slicker would on a whim try his hand at harvesting sunflowers. As it turns out, explainable phenomena are rather low on this movie's agenda. Shortly after moving into their farmhouse, Jess starts seeing decomposing spirits emerging from the walls and murky water oozing in the basement. Her three-year-old brother Ben (Evan and Theodore Turner) sees them, too, but doesn't seem all that upset (which, given the quality of the apparitions, is pretty much par for the course). A more pressing concern is whether she can get her parents to pull up stakes before death ensues, no mean feat considering the nuttiness of her claims.
There's some minor intrigue involving hired hand Burwell (John Corbett) and Jess's barely-registering teenage friend Bobby (Dustin Milligan), but mostly it's blue people (Silent Hill's Jodelle Ferland among them) leaving stains on walls and quivering violins cuing you to be frightened. Actually, it's mostly lead-up to those moments, meaning we're stuck with Roy, prissy mother Denise (Penelope Ann Miller), and the negative space that engulfs them in the house. As well, there are lame excuses for not believing Jess (de rigueur for this particular substratum of horror) that come off as less unjust than uninspired, while Jess' new-kid-in-town loneliness is all-too-familiar from various teenfilm sources. And one would commend The Messengers for its remarkable lack of exposition were it not for the rest of the dialogue, so sparse and so flat in delivery that you yearn for a little background detail just to leaven the tedium.
If you're looking for a horror movie you can show to your children, you've come to the right place: The Messengers appears to have been sucked dry. There's nothing here that sets it apart from other movies, aside from its shattering lack of originality and a ridiculous climax; the filmmakers do the bare minimum required of a horror movie before retreating to other things. I haven't seen any of the Pang Brothers' previous work, but I feel safe in saying this one probably doesn't keep faith with their cult following: it gives the impression–as with a couple of other Asian directors transposed to America–of having jettisoned the very thing that distinguished them and broken their backs on Hollywood normalcy.
Sony presents The Messengers on DVD in a stunning, if purposefully garish,1.87:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer whose 480p video doesn't seem like much of a trade-off from Blu-ray, though the image could only benefit from the increased shadow detail afforded by HD. The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is similarly unimpeachable thanks to a creative, articulate mix that offers great surround effects whenever the Messengers strike (admittedly, not as frequently as one might like) and consistently persuasive ambient sound. Extras begin with a commentary featuring Stewart, Milligan, screenwriter Mark Wheaton, and VFX supervisor Bruce Jones, and despite the dearth of above-the-title creative personnel, the whole thing is surprisingly lively. Wheaton sheds light on the inclusion and rearrangement of certain scenes (the opening attack on a family was once introduced part of the way through; there was constant haggling over what constituted PG-13 violence) and there's lots of crosstalk about working with twin brothers Danny and Oxide Pang, who would apparently swap eyeglasses in order to fool cast and crew.
A seven-part making-of called "Exhuming The Messengers" begins with "Pang Vision" (6 mins.), in which we learn that one Pang will shoot while the other edits, alternating every other day–but mostly it's blather from the cast and crew regarding the film's specialness and the concept of "neo-horror." "Script Evolution" (4 mins.) deals vaguely with the process of writing the screenplay: while Wheaton touches on the collaborative process of writing with the Pangs, it's largely more of the cast singing hosannas to the script and to the directors. "Constructing the Set" (6 mins.) is a bit more edifying, as several designers discuss the creation of the house set from scratch, dragging in an existing barn from parts unknown and finding the right sort of sunflowers and scheduling things around their blooming. "Kristen Stewart: Rising Star" (4 mins.) speaks the praises of the lead actress, yet although we learn the Pangs liked her for her expressive eyes, we hear little else that's concrete.
A clip on John Corbett (4 mins.)–whose title I can't reveal without blowing a major plot point (on that note, don't examine the back of the slipcover too closely)–runs along similar lines, with the actor openly enjoying a change-of-pace role and others noting the terrific casting; and "Meet the Crows (4 mins.) contemplates the art of raven wrangling and the choreography of the birds' climactic attack. Lastly, "Exploring Visual Effects" (6 mins.) broaches several unique ways to render ghosts at various frame rates and depict behaviour that is not natural to crows. Taking its brevity into account, this final piece is reasonably thorough and educational. Completing the package are trailers for Across the Universe, Premonition, Ghost Rider, The Grudge 2, "Seinfeld", Blood & Chocolate, Stomp the Yard, and Catch and Release, the first three cuing up on startup.
90 minutes; PG-13; 1.87:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French DD 5.1; CC; English, French subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Sony
