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The Messengers (2007)

DVD Cover (Sony Home Entertainment)
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Overall Rating 53%
Overall Rating
Ranked #2,625
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Connections: The Messengers

When the Solomons trade in the craziness of big-city life for the quiet of a North Dakota farm, little do they expect the nightmare that follows. Soon after arriving, teenage Jess and her younger brother see terrifying apparitions and endure attacks from a supernatural source. Jess must warn her disbelieving family before it is too late to save them. --TMDb
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Review by Crispy
Added: May 13, 2013
I had absolutely zero interest in watching The Messengers. A PG-13 horror movie starring one Kristen Stewart didn't exactly sound like a winning combination, but Mom had been wanting to see it, and the local DVD shop had it on sale for a dollar. And so, here we go.

After the obligatory flashback scene watching a family terrorized by an unseen force, we catch up with teenaged Jess Soloman. Simply put, her life sucks. Not only is she constantly at odds with her parents, especially her mother, but the family's financial problems have forced them to leave Chicago for the country and try their luck at sunflower farming. As she settles into the dull monotony that is country life, she quickly learns she has bigger things to worry about then dying of boredom. The disturbances start out pretty minor. A stain on the wall that keeps coming back. A murder of oddly aggressive crows that are constantly hanging around the house. Her brother Ben regularly fixating on seemingly nothing at all. Soon enough, things take a turn for the worse, and Jess begins seeing hallucinations of a ghostly family and random destruction. As things get worse, it quickly becomes apparent that these are more than just hallucinations.

Now here's where things get really strange. I didn't hate it. Yes I know, after reading that plot outline I'm sure you all assumed that they pedaled out every cliche in the book, and you'd be absolutely right. Still, there's a reason people reuse the same old techniques time and time again. There was nothing new here, but those tricks were able to insert enough creepiness to keep things moving along nicely. It wasn't a stellar movie experience, but it was enough that I wasn't angrily looking at timer on the DVD player every five minutes. Plus, I'm sure some of you are worried about that PG-13 rating as well. No, there's no gore, there's no wanton nudity (Kristen was only sixteen here boys; settle down), but let's be honest. Adding that stuff into the mix would have raised my score maybe a single point. The lack thereof didn't exactly hurt anything.

Even though everything could generously be considered "adequate" at this point, there was on misstep that had quite a bit of collateral damage. What really dragged the movie down was how predictable it was. I had figured out half the big twist about twenty minutes into things, and if I had really been thinking about it I would have seen the other half. Without that little bit to fall back on, it just becomes a waiting game for things to inevitably fall into place. And while I (sort of) praised the movies use of cliches to keep the ball moving, admittedly you are going to tire of some of the director's more preferred tricks by movie's end.

Now, the way the plot works out, Jess is literally the only primary characters and everyone else falls into a secondary role. In other words, the entire movie was resting on the shoulders of Kristen Stewart. The same Kristen Stewart whose monotony has gone on to become a full-fledged meme. Even though this is before she had become a household name, I think our film makers realized that emoting wasn't exactly her thing, and made the character a withdrawn introvert. All she had to do was look scared from time to time, which she was able to pull off. An awesome decision, resulting in very little collateral damage. John Corbett is the only other character worth noting; he was pretty good for most of the movie, but he has something of a freak-out scene towards the end of the movie where he kind of loses it. Nothing major, but he's definitely treading into overacting territory.

This might be the only near-positive review for The Messengers you'll find, but I'm not even telling you it's good. It's merely passable. And to think, that's still better than I was expecting. 5.5/10.
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