The Friday Night Fright: The Mothman Prophecies
I have to admit I didn’t know much about The Mothman Prophecies when I bought it. I knew it wasn’t an updating of the Peter Cushing “classic” The Blood Beast Terror, but rather some sort of supernatural thriller that starred Richard Gere and was supposed to be based on “true events.” What led to my purchasing the DVD though was that it cost £2 which was exactly the amount I had left to spend after trading some DVDs at the local CEX store.
The “Mothman” of the title is a harbinger of doom and residents of Point Pleasant have started seeing the creature with alarming regularity. What widowed journalist John Klein has to figure out is just what impending disaster awaits the town.
The film doesn’t really deliver on the scare front but just about works as a supernatural thriller. Its only really spooky moments being a couple of phone calls between Klein and the apparently omniscient Indrid Cole (the name the mothman uses).
Spinning a thirty minute Twilight Zone plot into a two hour movie means that far too little happens for the bulk of the running time. When things finally kick of at the end the film owes as much to Irwin Allen disaster movies as any horror film, although the final punch line adds a nice twist to the tale.
