The Messengers

The Messengers (2007)

Directed by: Danny and Oxide Pang
Written by: Mark Wheaton
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller, John Corbett, Evan Turner, Theodore Turner, Dustin Milligan, William B. Davies, Jodelle Ferland

I read an article about this in the NY Times magazine a long time ago, and I was all like, hoy! Shot in Saskatchewan! Kept that in mind when I was watching it, even though it was set in North Dakota.

Anyway, about a family that moves to North Dakota from Chicago to start a sunflower farm. The kids start seeing scary ghosts, but the parents don't believe them. Damn, I hate it when that happens. As it happens, the ghosts are only warning the newcomers that the guy they hired to plant sunflowers or whatever is about to go Jack Torrence all over the place.

Yes indeedie. As with The Eye, the ghosts aren't actually evil, they're just weird looking.

Um... not so much scary, though. Not even particularly creepy. It was actually kind of lame and I talked pretty much all the way through it. Which is kind of sad.

It was just kind of poorly paced. It had Canadian pacing as we like to say. It sort of went on and on and nothing really happened and when it did it was downplayed to the point of not even really mattering. And the dialogue was slow. The acting didn't stand out as being that great either. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't awesome.

I didn't really like the cast all that much, to be quite honest. Nothing personally, just nobody in it really grabbed me. Although, as I just read today, the little dead boy was played by Jodelle Ferland, of Tideland and that other thing. Go Jodelle. She's from B.C. Apparently Scout Taylor Compton auditioned for the main role. I like her better than the girl who was in this.

There were a couple of Canadians in movie, but not in the main parts. And not really ones I'm familiar with. I think one of the guys was on X-Files. Yay.

Moving on: The ghosts were weird looking but not especially frightening. I guess I'm becoming immune to the freaky things crawling up the walls with their feet on backwards.

I guess the original Eye wasn't that scary either (I went to see the remake, by the way, but I'll get to that).

Anyway, the CG crows weren't terribly impressive either. I wasn't entirely sure what their purpose was, but oh well. Nice homage to/rip-off of The Birds though.

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