THE MESSENGERS

The Messengers Movie Review

The Solomon family moves into a haunted farm house, and daughter Jess (Kristen Stewart, Panic Room, The Runaways), a trouble making teen of some sort, is the only one of the family who can tell something is wrong--well, her little brother can too, but he doesn't talk...or show emotion...or do anything redeeming. This movie came out in 2007, the tail-end of about a five year stretch when these ghost/haunting movies were hitting the big screen seemingly every month. Not that I was complaining--many of these films were really good--The Messengers just doesn't happen to be one of them. By the time this movie arrived in theaters, we had already watched The Ring, The Grudge (wait, I haven't reviewed The Grudge yet?!), and probably even the Japanese movies that inspired them, so when we watched The Messengers, it just came off as a rip-off of those films...and it still does to this day.

"What face am I supposed to be making again?"

Most of the scares are a CGI-fest and/or jump scare, but there is a scene or two that will grab your attention. Kristen Stewart, the queen of the stone-faced actresses, is just that in this film--the only thing surprising about this is that the twins who play Ben, her little brother, are even more stone-faced than Stewart--I know this is hard to believe, but trust me on this one. Penelope Ann Miller (Chaplin, The Relic) and Dylan McDermott (Home For The Holidays, American Horror Story) phone this one in as Jess' parents, but John Corbett (The Wonder Years, Northern Exposure) saves the day, turning in, by far, the best performance in the film. A twist and turn along the way will keep you going, as will a couple creepy appearances by William B. Davis (the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files), but in the end, his existence in this film, and the twists, really don't make a lot of sense. All that said, this movie made a ton of money, and spawned a prequel that more closely follows the original script and is much better. The Messengers really isn't a bad movie--it has some entertaining elements, but you have to take it for what it is--a cheap version of much better films. 

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 5

The Messengers Movie Trailer