Review of The Mothman Prophecies (2002) by Ross M — 01 Aug 2010

In a disturbing car accident, The Mothman became a part of John Klein's (Richard Gere) life. His wife Mary (Debra Missing) is injured and is brought to the hospital. After gaining consciousness, she constantly keeps talking about some creature she saw that caused the accident, and she even draws pictures of what she saw. After she is pronounced dead a few days later, John stumbles upon these pictures. Two years later, John is sent on a business trip to meet the governor, however, in a bizzare mistake, John ends up in the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virgina. After befriending a neighborly couple with strange sightings of the same creature his late wife discovered, John teams up with a local sherrif named Connie (Laura Linney) to crack the case and uncover the mystery surrounding the famous Mothman creature.

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From a filmmaking perspective, The Mothman Prophecies is a very good movie. The acting is good, I will admit. Richard Gere does a fine job as the leading man and Laura Linney does play the cute love interest well. Plus, the secondary characters all play their roles respectively. It's a well acted film. I also enjoyed how the camera became part of the scene as well. At times, the camera rushes past characters in a "Someone is watching you" type of way. It heightened the suspense and the intrigue. The other thing I enjoyed was how unclear the film is. It provided some interesting conversation afterwards surrounding the characters and events posed in this film. We haven't seen many movies (let alone thrillers) that require conversation afterwards and it's nice to see the chain be broken with this film.

The Mothman Prophecies has an incredible first half. It's genuinely frightening, it asks a few questions to keep you intrigued, and it's just falt out entertaining. The second half, however, becomes plauged with tedious scenes of repition, lack of scares, and more and more questions that make this film confusing instead of intriguing. The film becomes boring and this huge climactic disaster that keeps being reffered to, doesn't pay you back by making a somewhat boring and dull climax. (For one, the cameraman suddenly becomes a Parkinson's victim and for the life of him, he can't hold the darn camera still so the audience can make out what is going on.).

The Mothman Prophecies is a film that is supposedly based off true events. To quote Jay Boyar of the Orlando Sentinel-.

"There's not much going on in this movie unless you simply decide to buy into the notion that something inexplicably strange once happened in Point Pleasant.".

While I don't really have an opinion on if this "Mothman" is real or not, I do agree that if I did believe in this creature, I would have a much better experience. The scares would have worked well if I was able to get into the film. I can recognize sequences in which somebody that was into the film could be affected by it. So, I will not dismiss that aspect of the film. If you start watching this movie and you are sucked in, there is going to be some really creepy stuff in there, and The Mothman Prophecies will be a pretty terrifying experience. As somebody who was already disengaged from the experience, those scenes only served to make me feel bad that I couldn't enjoy it the way others might.

All in all, The Mothman Prophecies is a decent film that provides some questions that ultimately require conversation afterwards. The film does have it's scares, and it does provide a CHILLING atmosphere, but I wasn't affected by it like some others might be. It's just okay.