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FILM DETAILS

Certificate 15

Cast Mark Wheaton Graham Bell John Corbett Dylan McDermott Penelope Ann Miller.

Directors Oxide Pang Chun Danny Pang.

Screenwriters Stuart Beattie Todd Farmer.

Running Time 90 mins. minutes

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The Messengers
Dark clouds, farmhouses, kids, ghosts... you know the drill

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Plot
With the arrival of an unexplained darkness over a normally sunny North Dakota farm, the Solomon family begins to crumble and implode with suspicion and murder.

Review
After a harsh accident drives them from the city, Dylan McDermott's family head for North Dakota and an idyllic life on a sunflower farm. Happily, the dream house turns into a furniture-shuddering nightmare when teen daughter Jess (Kristen Stewart) and her gormless baby brother are molested by crows and start seeing dead people crawling up the ceiling...

Directed with faceless proficiency by Hong Kong upstarts Oxide and Danny Pang, this slowburn chiller cribs from so many sources — Amityville, The Sixth Sense, countless J-horrors — that its creaky doors, murky basements, behind-you ghosts and bad plumbing sound FX thud with a zero-fear factor.

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Average user rating for The Messengers

Same old stuff....

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. ... More

Posted by JimBo! at 16:43, 14 October 2007 | Report This Post

Lame

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. ... More

Posted by Caster at 21:24, 02 June 2007 | Report This Post

utterly ludicrous ... More

Posted by moviemaniac2 at 14:44, 12 April 2007 | Report This Post

RE: The Messengers

It sounds shit. ... More

Posted by curtain twitcher at 00:01, 11 April 2007 | Report This Post

RE: The Messengers

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 ... More

Posted by travel_crazy at 23:59, 10 April 2007 | Report This Post

RE: RE:

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, he... More

Posted by Merly at 13:08, 10 April 2007 | Report This Post

RE:

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... More

Posted by joemanji at 12:22, 10 April 2007 | Report This Post

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 ... More

Posted by felix sore foot at 17:14, 09 April 2007 | Report This Post

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 ... More

Posted by felix sore foot at 17:13, 09 April 2007 | Report This Post

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