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The Messengers
Directed by the Pang Brothers
Starring Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller, John Corbett & Kristen Stewart


The Film:

The Pang Brothers might be the most overrated directors in Asian Cinema. Last I checked they only had one good movie called The Eye which had one scene in particular with a ghost in the hallway that almost made me lose control of my bowels! However that was then this is now. Since the Eye the Pang Brothers have continued to make movies that are overall uneven and by the numbers. The Messengers is their first US release and was produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert who of course brought us the Evil Dead films.

Even with the Pangs behind this movie I thought that maybe, just maybe, that this time Raimi would get a good horror movie for his Ghost House production label but I'm sorry to say that its another strike.

The Messengers starts out with promise with a family being terrorized by a seemingly invisible entity that is trying to kill a mother and her son. From here we're introduced to a new family that is moving into the same house some time later. Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller are sort of sleep walking through their rolls of Mom and Dad to teenage daughter Kristen Stewart and young son that can see ghosts and can't speak conveniently. Apparently McDermott's character has been out of work for 2 years and decides to risk it all on starting a sunflower farm in the country. That's right... a sunflower farm. It doesn't get more random than that does it?

Soon after moving in the little boy begins seeing ghosts everywhere in the house and dauther, jesse is soon being attacked by invisible forces. The parents play the part of the typical oblivious bad parents that think their daughter is lying and hurting herself for attention. John Corbett shows up out of the blue and wanders around as a farm hand for a long time and appears to serve no purpose until the last reel of the movie where the plot and his involvement all come together. However if I imagine most viewers have figured it out by this point and are already getting pissed.

The Messengers is derivative of so many other recent movies that it almost seems schizophrenic. Ghosts float above the floor, crawl around in fast speeds and strut around like your typical Asian dark haired ghost all in the span of 10 minutes. There seems to be no real design for them. its Almost like the directors changed their mind on how to portray them from day to day making the movie seem very uneven. From what I understand about the Pang Brothers they often tag team direct a movie. One stays on set to direct, the other goes to the editing trailer to work on the film. Then the next day the switch. This would explain a lot.

The only stand out in this film is Kristen Stewart as Jesse. Her fear is very believable and its hard not to be sympathetic towards her character. I just wish we could have seen her in a better horror film than this. The rest of the characters really seem very thin and the acting is mediocre at best.

Visually the Messengers is interesting at times. Many shots are very well framed and executed but the shots that really count, the ghost shots, seem poorly thought out and almost always out of focus or obscured. Once scene in particular is ruined by focusing to closely on The characters of Jesse and the little boy to the point that you can't see the ghost walking up in the background at all. There are several scenes that just make you ask what the hell were they thinking?

I suppose teens might find this movie fulfilling but older horror fans are just going to turn it off in disgust. What could have been a decent horror film is nothing more that a rip off of many Asian horror films packed in to one bloated and glossy package.

DVD Extras:
I didn't even bother with watching them. I was too pissed to care.

FILM: 1/2 out of 5 Bloody Axes

World War Z by Max Brooks

I’ve always been a zombie movie fan ever since I was just a tyke. And, unlike other horror films, I was always terrified by zombie movies. Even today I’ll often have nightmares after watching or reading a good zombie tale. There’s a couple reasons why I think it has this effect on me and many other people. First is the horror of the dead roaming the earth in swarms and eating people. Then there’s the concept that if it happened the world as we know it would end. It’s that fear of losing everything and being hunted that gets me to my soul.

This is why I jumped on Max Brooks latest Zombie epic, World War Z. The book details from outbreak to all out War to recovery of a world ravaged by a virus that reanimates the dead. The story unfolds from the perspectives of many people in countries all over the world. Meticulously researched, Brooks grounds everything in reality. There are no wild leaps here in logic, no magical happy ending or glossing over of mistakes made by bureaucrats and politicians. World War Z takes an uncompromising look at a disaster and a worldwide scale and how each country deals with and tries to contain the outbreak.

The most interesting thing about World War Z is how you can take out the word “Zombie” and replace it with just about any natural or artificial disaster you can think of and the details of the story wouldn’t change that much. Brooks has captured the unpreparedness of not only our own United States to deal with this disaster but also countries all over the world. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that some type of viral outbreak could in fact occur on a world wide level and World War Z offers a lot of Insight into how unprepared the world is for such a disaster.

While the book goes into some very dark territory telling the story from perspectives and cultures from all over the world it does offer hope. While the world falls apart the human spirit certainly gets to thrive in this book and we see not only the willingness to survive but the willingness to help others. In stark contrast to that we also witness the rise of new dictators, witness the horrors of survivalist militias, and the general BS of the famous politicians.

The parallels from events such as the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina, and even terrorism can be drawn from this book. But the must inspiring aspect of it is the simple fact that the world, while divided up by politics, religion and other BS that shouldn’t matter, can come together in the face of a crises. I just hope it doesn’t take the end of the world as we know it to get to that place.

World War Z has already been optioned for a film but I highly recommend any fan of the zombie sub genre to pick this up immediately. Even people who aren’t horror fans can get a lot from this story just from the socioeconomic standpoint. World War Z is by far the best zombie story I’ve ever read.

Masters of Horror: The Screwfly Solution

Dir: Joe Dante

Okay. I'll admit it. Before The Screwfly Solution, I'd never seen an episode of the Masters of Horror. Don't ask me why. I don't have a good answer. Other than that I like my horror like I like my women: without commercial breaks and more than an hour long.

I've tried that joke out for three hours and I still can't make it work. Moving on.

Needless to say, when a friend of mine said that he had picked up The Screwfly Solution on DVD, I was hesitant. But as details began to creep forward, my interest started to perk up.

"Elliot Gould is in it? M*A*S*H* is one of my favourite movies! Jason Priestly? Well... he's a very competent actor... Joe Dante directed? Joe DANTE??? Man! I loved Gremlins! I loved Innerspace! I... hated Small Soldiers, but that's almost forgivable! GREMLINS! What a great movie.

The Screwfly Solution is loosely about a madness that slowly drifts north from the equator that makes men kill women in a violent rage, spouting religious epitaphs as they do so. That's pretty much the premise. The scientists (of whom Jason Priestley and Elliot Gould are two) know what's happening, but they're powerless to stop it. I could basically just skip everything in the middle and give you the end, but then I wouldn't be a very good reviewer, would I?

Or would I?

You see... the problem is... there isn't that much else to go on. Screwfly, like a lot of Dante's other works, seems to suffer from the problem of trying to be too much at once. Is it a relevant social commentary or a dark comedy or a horror flick? He's able to pull off this sort of balancing act in Gremlins, which is actually ABOUT something (curiosity vs. banal existence) and pretty much gets it right in The 'Burbs (curiosity vs... uh... banal existence?) but this time around, there's nothing there.

It could be that there wasn't enough time to sort out all the details in Sam Hamm's (writer of Batman and Monkeybone) adaptation of James Tiptee Jr.'s short story. It could be that they were focused on making it a cool, survival horror story in the style of a zombie flick. It have been a lot of things. But it's not.

Worse yet, it's almost entirely devoid of tension. Certainly, there are some real "uh oh, he/she is in trouble now" moments. There's some really gripping imagery. But on the whole, it doesn't gel.

And I have no idea what Elliot Gould was doing on this project. He couldn't have been phoning it in more. In fact, I think he was texting it in. I genuinely enjoy Gould in most things he does. But I suppose I should face it. It's not 1975 and Robert Altman didn't direct this.

If you'd like to see a movie that's similar and funny and scary, I would like to suggest renting a copy of Undead. You'll have more fun, I promise.

And with that, I think I'll skip Masters of Horror for the time being.

5/10. Passable and some of the ideas of the story resonated with me for a few days, but it probably made a better short story than a teleplay.