‘The Messengers’ - NOT a New Experience in Terror…
What is it with horror movies? They have been making them for donkey’s years but so many of them are still so damn corny. If you don’t agree, then have a look at some of the tosh on ‘Zone Horror’; you’ll soon come round to my way of thinking.
The other night I sat and watched, ‘The Messengers’. ‘Oooo, this looks good!’, I thought as I watched the Tim Burton-esque opening sequence. However, apart from some really nice photography, the whole thing rapidly descended into a muddled, mediocre mess.
Sometimes it can be really good to use a tried and tested formula for a script; and this is what ‘The Messengers’ attempted to do. A nice American family move into a small-holding intent on making a go of things. But a nasty husband/father once lived here who killed his wife and child (or was it children; the first indication of muddledness…). Things trundle along; a dirty patch appears on a bedroom wall that could not even be removed with the help of Cillit Bang(!), dead people interrupt children’s mealtimes and there is something nasty in the woodshed (and cellar), not to mention that everyone has conveniently run out of first aid supplies.
Needless to say, it all gets a little bit silly. It is predictable and painful to watch. The only saving graces are a few good jumpy moments and solid acting from the teenage girl. By the time you get to the end you will have a lot of unanswered questions; why do the characters stand right next to an angry-corpse infested mud-pool to have a group hug? What ‘message’ did the ‘messengers’ actually have? And why were they so hostile to the family when they could snuff out their murderer instead (he spends half of the movie in the house)?
It is all a bit of a mystery. But the most mysterious thing of all is how someone like Sam Raimi could be involved with crap like this. With a little bit of imagination it could all have been so good.
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