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.
For a film of this length you’d expect some well developed characters but only Gere’s journalist is really explored, and even he can be summed up as “grieving husband misses his dead wife.” Laura Linney’s cop/new love interest for Gere is as much a blank slate at the end of the film as she is when we first encounter her.
I got the impression director Mark Pellington thinks his film is more important than it really is and I had a similar complaint about his previous film, Arlington Road. He’s a visually impressive director but his po-faced approach to his subject matter prevents his films being as entertaining as they could be.
At two quid though it’s hard to complain too much about The Mothman Prophecies, even if a remake of The Blood Beast Terror would probably have been more fun.
