Imagine Scully of X-Files searching for a moth like beast who delivers disaster and death to innocent people.
Scully would search through files and talk to witnesses who would undoubtedly have some secret to hide .
Finally, when she had almost given up, she would uncover the mothman. The creature that had grown from a moth to the size of a man because of a degenerate gene.
That would have been a very interesting and entertaining episode for X-Files, but The Mothman Prophecies which runs 119 minutes long just doesn’t work.
John Klein (Richard Gere), the star reporter for the Washington Post and Mary (Debra Messing), his wife, are beginning to realize what happiness really is. Then Mary gets into a car accident in their Mercedes with what appears to be nothing but air.
Mary is injured and John with all of his love and support cannot seem to help his ailing wife and she ends up dying in about the first ten minutes of the movie.
As John collects his beloved wife’s things at the hospital he remembers her last words: “You didn’t see it, did you?”
He then finds a book with drawings of some very disturbing black creatures.
Skip ahead two years later and John is living in a very depressed world where he seems to bury himself in his work.
On a business trip to meet the governor in Richmond his car breaks down next to a house where the homeowner threatens to kill him for continually knocking at his door for the last three nights even though John has never been there before.
Sgt. Connie Parkar (Laura Linney) responds to the police call and explains to John that many weird things have been reported in town. She drops him off at a hotel where he finds out he is on the West Virginia- Ohio state border in a town called Point Pleasant . This is to John’s dismay since the town is 400 miles from his original destination.
The Mothman Prophecies which is based on true events chronicled in the book of the same name by John A. Keel is lacking resolute.
The viewer learns about the mothman, but not in the way most science fiction movies thrive on their scholarly explanations about the unexplainable.
The sightings of the Mothman are less than enthusiastic. The viewer really doesn’t even see the Mothman throughout the film which is really disappointing.
After many appearances on the late night circuit, fun girl Debra Messing (Will and Grace) was expected to have a larger part in the movie. However, Laura Linnie ( The Truman Show, You Can Count on Me) was rarely seen in the promos and starred in the movie opposite Richard Gere .
No one had a stellar performance in this movie because the plot and special effects stole the film.
The suspension bridge which falls into the Ohio river was one of the best special effects and thrills of the entire movie. Families, business men and women, teenagers and seniors sit on the bridge honking and yelling as a traffic jam traps the cars into a gridlock.
Next, the fear of god is put into the helpless travelers when the wires start snapping and breaking windows as the bridge begins to fall in the water.
People watch helplessly on the side as their loved ones and friends go crashing into the ice cold water never to be seen again.
This is an excellent movie re creation of the event that happened in December of 1967 killing 46 people.
The plot moves along, but ends up dwelling on certain things that slow the movie down.
The movie seems to offer a little romance between Sgt. Parkar and John, but there is not even a kiss in the movie between them.
Another problem is a townsman who dies after making the mothman some type of hero. This is odd since people are supposed to disappear if they get to close to the creature.
The movie is not gory and really doesn’t have much violence.
The townspeople are so separated from society that no guilt is really felt when they are killed or found missing except when the bridge collapses.
It seems the movie should have taken more from the book and less from the “movie
success book” which seems to offer movies poor plots that will appeal to the masses.
The Mothman Prophecies is trapped between a science fiction and horror movie.
The scariest moments in the movie are quite cheap . These scenes don’t cause much jumpiness or heart palpitations, except maybe for a pre-teen girl.
The supposed science e fiction scenes are really not intelligent enough for that genre and are not for the science fiction enthusiast.
This movie is one that you can go get popcorn and make a phone call; yet still not miss too much of what is going on.
The Mothman Prophecies was a let down from all of the hype built around it. It hardly did justice to the book from where the story was taken from.
