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Directed by The Pang Brothers
Rated PG-13
Review by Dr. Royce Clemens
I’ve had my inklings before, but The Messengers has confirmed them. PG-13 rated horror films (and most Asian horror films, now that I think about it) are like the jukeboxes at strip clubs. You might get a little “LaGrange,” you might get a little “Legs,” you might even get a little “Sharp-Dressed Man.” But at the end of the day it’s all the same damn ZZ Top! The Messengers is much like a NEW ZZ Top album, which sounds like all the old ones and might as well be titled “We Did this For The Money.”
The Solomon family: Father Roy, (Dylan McDermott) Mother Denise, (Penelope Ann Miller) Daughter Jess (Kirsten Stewart) and Mutant Son Ben (Disposable Moppet #11,382) move into a farm in the country haunted by the specters of disgruntled Hollywood special effects men. Oh sure, the movie will try to tell you it’s actually ghosts, but I know a pissed off Foley Artist slamming his millionth door when I hear one. The funny thing about these ghosts is that they’ve actually seen the trailers for the movie they’re in, and can only appear to little Ben and occasionally Jess.
The ghosts are nothing special. If you’ve seen Silent Hill then you’ve seen them a million times scarier. They’ve got the prerequisites down: White eyes, varicose skin, tattered clothing and they all do they jittery little slow-shutter jazzercize thing. I’m surprised at this point that people in these movies don’t regard the ghosts that haunt them as though they were Pandas in the zoo. “Oh, so THAT’S what they look like up close.”
Or maybe they already do. Little Ben isn’t even three yet and the set of twins they got to play him don’t even have the common Goddamn courtesy to look scared.
The rest of the acting is just as priceless. McDermott and Miller conjoin to form the Has-Been Gemini. And Kirsten Stewart (of Panic Room and Zathura) attacks her role with all the vigor and sincerity of a waitress at Denny’s. You can tell she just looks really impressed by the whole thing. She delivers her lines in that sneering and contemptuous sort of way that makes one long for the days of corporal punishment… That and she should eat something. I could stir my coffee with her.
And I almost forgot to mention that Sex and the City vet John Corbett is in this film. In his first shot he comes down from a field with a beard all Jeremiah Johnson-ish, at which point I died laughing.
So it’s door-slammy and nail-scratchy for an hour and a half. Roy and Denise are abosolutely determined to hold on to their real-estate at the expense of everything else just like in every other Haunted House flick known to man. Just once I’d like to see everyone pack and move out at the first thing going bump in the night. Granted this flick would be really short, but at least I wouldn’t feel so insulted.
But maybe they’re right. Aside from a few scratches and abrasions, the ghosts in this film suffer from the PG-13 handicap, inasmuch as they can’t do anything to their victims to earn an R. So maybe they figure that if they keep enough gauze and iodine on hand, there won’t be a problem and they could get used to them. This results in a painfully dull film, as evidenced by the old fat guy snoring two rows behind me.
The Messengers is directed by the brotherly filmmaking duo of Danny and Oxide Pang. They directed the HK horror import The Eye. They, along with Hideo Nakata and Takashi Shimizu, prove that sometimes embarrassing yourself in just ONE language isn’t good enough for some folks. But it’s a good way to get started, I figure. PG-13 rated horror films are a quick way to make a buck, so maybe they could move on to better things. or not. This IS Hollywood after all. The good stuff comes kicking and screaming.
But I will say this though: I will never knock the American remakes of Asian horror films ever again. Apparently Asian directors can come over here and shit all over their own legacies with much more efficiency and gloss.
*1/2 out of 4
[Editor's Note: Horror Yearbook would like to welcome our NEW writer Dr. Royce Clemens.]
Read all of Dr. Royce Clemens reviews in his Archives.
