Written by Jennifer
March 05, 2009
...if you're not smart enough to be worried about a giant blotch of mold on your wall, you probably don't have the brains to know that your house is lousy with the undead.
The Messengers is not an especially good movie, nor is it especially original, but I liked it anyway. Any time a hapless family moves into a gross old house and things start going all Amityville on them, my interest is piqued. Throw in John Corbett and I'm sold.
Following some sort of trouble in Chicago, Roy and Denise Solomon (Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller) pack up their two children and move to an old farm in North Dakota. The place is practically falling down around their ears, but they settle right in as though it's not disgusting. Their teenage daughter, Jess (Kristen Stewart), gladly sticks her hand in dark crannies, and thinks nothing of exploring the upstairs while her parents unpack the car. Even Ben, the eerily silent toddler, just takes in the whole scene as though nothing's wrong. Do these people have no standards?
As further evidence of Roy's sunny-minded optimism, his master plan is to make a living in sunflowers. To heck with boring, sensible crops like cotton or corn - Roy's field will look like a Hallmark card! Despite being attacked by a mob of crows, he forges ahead with his plan, even taking in Burwell, a wandering handyman played by John Corbett.
As Roy fends off the crows and tends to his flowers, Denise does battle with a nasty black stain on her bedroom wall. Nevermind that it keeps coming back every time she scrubs it—there's nothing gross about this house! In fact, the only thing that seems to scare Denise is Jess. Every so often she'll do something really alarming like pick up the car keys (to hand them to her dad) or go after Ben (and give him a hug). Denise flies off the handle with, "JESS HAS THE KEYS!" or "JESS HAS THE BABY!" Then everyone stares and Denise looks at her feet and eventually she has to say she's sorry. Geez! What the heck did that girl do back in Chicago?
If Denise and Roy weren't so afraid of Jess, they might have the good sense to notice that their house is totally haunted. That skittering noise on the ceiling? It's not a mouse, it's not the house settling, it's a little black creature that crawls up the walls on its hands and knees! Ben sees it all the time and just watches with mild fascination, which in my book makes him just as spooky. When I was little, I couldn't go from one end of the house to the other without turning on every light and sprinting, because I was just sure that little ghouls would be lurking in the dark. Imagine seeing one and not reacting—holy crap!
Ultimately it is Jess who has the truly terrifying paranormal encounters, and after a few run-ins with the ghosties in the basement, she tries to warn her family that something is horribly wrong. Of course, having lost all credibility back in Chicago, no one believes her, even when she winds up in the emergency room. Burwell is amiable and always willing to listen, but he's not much help, and one of the boys in town has only the vaguest information about the house—"Yeah, we used to think it was haunted. No, we don't know what happened to the family before you. They lived there and then they didn't... I guess they left." Oh for goodness sake—they left?! They didn't leave! Somebody chopped them up and buried them under the floorboards—any idiot can see that!
I wish I could say that the film races to a heart-pounding conclusion, but by the time things get really messy and the plot twist is revealed, the momentum is lost. The movie's pacing pretty much eliminates the BOO! factor, and the characters are about as bright as Gomer Pyle. I mean, if you're not smart enough to be worried about a giant blotch of mold on your wall, you probably don't have the brains to know that your house is lousy with the undead. The Messengers won't blow you away with its deliberate plotting or its recycled storyline, but I would happily file it in the so-bad-it's-good section of the video store. If you're anything like me, you'll have fun just making fun of it.
