The Messengers

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The Messengers - 9/4/2007 5:13:59 PM

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Post #: 1

- 9/4/2007 5:13:59 PM

felix sore foot

Posts: 322
Joined: 21/7/2006
From: Renfrewshire

OK, here's how it goes:

Family leaves city to get out of rat race---check
Kooky daughter with suspect mental health---check
Big black crows---check
Something odd lurking in the basement---check
Gloop seeping through the floorboards---check

You can pretty much see where this is going, yeah? It's horror by numbers with a truly ridiculous plot which is totally incomprehensible...And frankly, the Pang Brothers should know much better than this. It even looks naff. And my, those sunflowers grew very quickly...

Horror should at least have an element of suspense or surprise, but believe me when I tell you that this one has all the tension of a Thora Hird-read Alan Bennett monologue.

And those noises from the basement? That's the under-side of the horror movie barrel being scraped. This film stinks.

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Post #: 2

- 9/4/2007 5:14:07 PM

felix sore foot

Posts: 322
Joined: 21/7/2006
From: Renfrewshire

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Post #: 3

RE: - 10/4/2007 12:22:44 PM

joemanji

Posts: 282
Joined: 26/1/2006
From: Scunthorpe

Terrible. Lots of walking around a creaky old house for no reason, and then ... guess what .... LOUD NOISE!!!. Original. The scene that really tipped it for me was when the girl walks around looking for a ghost with her brother, but because the house is small and they are dragging it out, she must walk around the same rooms 3 or 4 times. Pointless.

SPOILERS

Did I miss something with the killer? Why did he suddenly go mad? Or rather, why was he pretending to be sane in the first place? How did he not recognise his own house? Made no sense whatsoever.

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Post #: 4

RE: RE: - 10/4/2007 1:08:11 PM

Merly

Posts: 3479
Joined: 1/4/2006
From: Soap Sud Alley

I agree with you guys. Was very dissapointed in this. it was so unoriginal. It felt stale and at first I thought it might be something different and fresh but it just descended into a play it by numbers haunted house story and not a very good one at that. I mean to be fair, it was pretty creepy in places and it made me jump a lot but this was mainly due ot the fact that it was so god damn loud. They seemed to rely on the sound effects only to create any scares or tension.
Oxide Pang: Hmmm, hey bro, this is lacking in something
Danny Pang: Yeah erm dunno, lets just make everything really loud, that way if it isn't scary the audience will still jump if we blast thier ears off
Oxide Pang: Yeah, hmmmm good idea.

SPOILERS!!!

I also have no idea why John suddenly went mad. It was like the crows attacked him and then he woke up from some kind of Fugue and realised that he was supposed to be a bit barmy and set about going all Jack Nicholson in the shining on us. It was a very shabby plot.

Having said that there were some genuinely eerie moments. Spider boy crawling on the cieling, mum coming through the wall, disembodied legs under the sheets, ghost creeping up in girl and boy near the cellar door etc.
Trouble is the Pang brothers have done this kind of thing before with films like The Eye. It seems that whenever Asian directors try to westernise movies for an american audience they fail. The originals are always far superior. The Eye was a good movie so I was expecting far better than this from the Brothers Pang

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The She shepherd hot chocolated me, it's her juju.

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Post #: 5

RE: The Messengers - 10/4/2007 11:59:53 PM

travel_crazy

Posts: 198
Joined: 3/1/2006

I went to see this with my sister this evening as we're both shameless fans of rubbish horror films at the cinema. Well, I say 'rubbish' horror films but I actually mean those ones that are so bad they're actually good.

This, however, was so bad that it was actually...well...just shit! Everything was awful...the ridiculous looking CGI monster things, the turgid script, the predictable storyline (haven't we seen this film a 1000 times before), the over-the-top sound effects and (the cherry on the top) the Razzie-inducing 'acting'. Penelope Ann Miller was so wooden that I actually laughed on a number of occasions!

And the depressing thing is, those laughs were the highlights of my entire evening. That and the fantastic feeling brought on by the overdue arrival of the credits. Bliss!

DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE!

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (6/10)
Inception (10/10)
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An American Werewolf in London (8/10)
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Post #: 6

RE: The Messengers - 11/4/2007 12:01:45 AM

curtain twitcher

Posts: 4816
Joined: 9/4/2007
From: The Hotel California

It sounds shit.

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend. Those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.

There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those who have a rope around their neck and those who have the job of cutting.

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Post #: 7

- 12/4/2007 2:44:33 PM

moviemaniac2

Posts: 525
Joined: 17/9/2006

utterly ludicrous

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Post #: 8

Lame - 2/6/2007 9:24:45 PM

Caster

Posts: 5608
Joined: 30/9/2005

Aside from the odd nice shot, the lovely Kristen Stewart and some hilarious killer crows this is totally by the numbers guff. Things don't so much go bump in the night as CRASH BANG WHALLOP!! Scenes have the potential to be scary but are rushed or ruined by loud interruptions of music to tell you to BE AFRAID! It's utter nonsense - literally; it makes no sense (why do the ghosts attack the girl?). Mildly entertaining but for all the wrong reasons.

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Post #: 9

Same old stuff.... - 14/10/2007 4:43:17 PM

JimBo!

Posts: 35
Joined: 23/2/2007
From: Brighton/Hove

I only slightly enjoyed and jumped at this dull film becuase i watched it on a massive plasma screen with surround sound, The jumps were so obvious and the special effects were byond terrible I t is however an easy way to kil an hour and a half.

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Post #: 10