Review of The Mothman Prophecies (2002) by Vince K — 26 Mar 2010

I've been obsessed with the story of the Mothman since I was a little kid. It was always the most terrifying story I had ever heard. And the eye-witness account made it all the more believable. So, since the movie came out, and after researching every piece of information available to the point of obsession, I also became obsessed with the film as well.

I always have had a tendency to push it on people, no matter how big of a weirdo they thought I was I really didn't care, since I think the movie is proof of everything I've known to be true my whole life.

The Mothman Prophecies is based on a true story. Yes, that's right a true story. One of the many reasons it's my favorite is because it's not just another one of those crazy unbelievable paranormal movies I love; this really happened.

And if you think its "unbelievable", you're pretty deluded. What, did hundreds of people all over the world who didn't know eachother just decide to tell everyone that they saw the exact same thing (and keep in mind it's been seen since the dawn of time) like it's some kind of pre-planned conspiracy or hoax? The proof is in the pudding, you could give any of these people lie detector tests and they're telling the truth.

But anyways, the story follows the events that took place in the '60s in smalltown Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Dozens of people had reported seeing a large, black, 10-foot-tall creature with glowing red eyes.

Kind of looked like a man wearing a big black trenchcoat (those are his wings folded up). About a year into the sightings, Silver Bridge collapsed on a traffic-jammed Christmas Eve (the stop lights were malfunctioning) and many, many people died.

The movie takes these events that took place and expand on it, putting Richard Gere and Laura Linney in there so you have likeable characters to go through this with. The movie is pretty scary; when I saw it in the theatre I swear to god every woman there was screaming their head off.

Then the thought of believing in this thing gets into people's minds and they're scared for life. People WILL probably believe anything, but it's nice to know that that happened for once for something that is actually based in reality.

Sightings of Mothman even predate religion. I also have a deck of Tarot Cards, Crow's Magick, with a pterodactyl on the Knight of Wands (shapeshift, change), and on The Universe. He's very small on there but definitely part of the scheme of things.

I never thought of this until recently, but Mothman is obviously the Angel of Death. And if that's real, and on earth, then maybe a lot of other unbelievable things are real as well. Probably the most haunting scene in the film is when the Mothman contacts Richard Gere's journalist character John Klein on the telephone.

Keep in mind John is a skeptic in this until the whole thing just becomes too severe for him not to believe. Anyways, the voice says its name is Indrid Cold, and when Klein asks it various questions, it knows all the answers.

Like where he just put his watch (his shoe, under the bed), what he grabbed out of the drawer (chapstick), and even the third line on a page of the book he picks up. When he asks if he's reading his mind, he says "I have no need to".

The conversation is recorded, and when Klein gets it analyzed, it's proven that the voice on the tape was definitely "not human". This all really happened as well to the journalist in real life.

So, anyways, you can see where my point of obsession has gone with this. If you look Mothman up online you'll find a great page of up-to-date sightings and astonishing eye-witness accounts. And the 2-disc DVD has that great documentary I saw years before this that has interviews with many of the people who saw him.

Will Patton is also great in this, and Debra Messing is in the beginning briefly as the wife who dies of a brain tumor after a car accident which was caused by her sudden sighting the Mothman standing in the middle of the road.

He never really appears in the film, but in the car accident scene you'll have to pause and slow it down to see his brief half-second appearance. But yeah, I could go on forever on this. So, just let me say, this movie has to be in my top five of all time.

And I thought the band that did the soundtrack had a funny name - Tomandandy. I had been pronouncing it Toman-dandy until I realized it was actually Tom-and-Andy. Just thought that was funny.