last night's movie was The Mothman Prophecies (2002)! and oh boy, i loved this one.
this is another one of those movies that had a really awesome trailer i remember watching online and also was on tv a lot and i had every intention of watching it one day but just......never got around to it. it came up in my plex library last night while looking for something to watch and i decided to give it a chance as i had heard that it is a pretty decent little chiller, though it's not without issues. and honestly, i enjoyed every minute of it. it feels like a really good X-Files episode with some just awesome moments that feel like the viewer is treated like an adult, if that makes sense.
it was a shock to me as to anyone else when i found out that Richard Gere was the main lead in this movie and that he pulls it off incredibly well. i usually think of Gere as someone who appears in lighter films, so seeing him in this borderline surreal horror role and making it work so well. Gere plays John Klein, the Washington Post journalist whose life went from storybook happiness to complete depressed misery in one moment and who is driven to find out what happened to his wife as people keep hinting that her condition wasen't all that it seems. the rest of the cast is fine too, with Laura Linney playing Connie Mills, a local cop in the town of Pleasant Falls, WV, who becomes a friend of Klein but is scared about his obsessions even as the townsfolk start reporting the same phenomena as he is. i like that their relationship is less love interest and more caring friend too, as they could have easily made her into a pretty boring character by doing that. she understands John's trauma and wants to help him move on in a genuine way.
the movie's look is fantastic, with a genuine cold and alien feel to most of the story. there's lots of fantastic uses of long, wide shots, timelapses and focusing/defocusing throughout the movie too that add to the whole disorienting/this-isn't-what-it-seems feeling of the movie that work so well, with the Pleasant Falls Chemical Plant burning away against a cold grey sky always a recurring element. there's one shot in particular that stands out to me when Klein is in the quarry where a couple got attacked by something and there's both a really awesome image matching shot as well as just the horrible coldness of everything in this industrial wasteland with nothing around but dirt, debris and the plant's smokestacks. it's really incredible.
the music by Tomandandy is also wonderful. it's this discordant, often atonal mix of acoustic, industrial, dark ambient and drone music/sounds and it works so goddamn well in this movie to make everything just a bit more uncomfortable and intense in the best way possible. it honestly reminds me a lot of the stuff on the Ghosts ambient albums that Nine Inch Nails did, which is very funny as Ghosts as a track that samples The Mothman Prophecies! and it's one of my favorite tracks! special shoutout to the amazing end credits song Half Light that is just perfect for this movie and i've now listened to it seven times since last night. i liked this score so much that i'm sitting here wondering if it ever came out on vinyl because i'd love to own it.
i actually really liked the story and i'm confused by some of the contemporary critique of it. there are some valid criticisms of it, like the way it uses real world tragedy in a bit of a poor taste manner (even if the sequence is kind of incredible), but overall i really loved how uncertain everything was. here's the setup: after wrapping up a story at his job, John Klein leaves the office to meet with his wife Mary (Debra Messing) to go look at a house. they instantly fall in love with it (and each other) and purchase it, with the plans to raise a family there. however, on the drive back, Mary is startled by visions of a horrible creature coming at them, causing her to briefly lose control of the car before smashing her head into the side window and falling unconscious while her husband tries to get her help. Mary is taken to the hospital and seems terrified of everything, including the presence of John at her bedside. after John asks how she is doing, Mary asks if John saw it as well, which he denies. this causes Mary to withdraw more. tests are run on Mary and it's discovered she has a rare kind of brain tumor (Glioblastoma) which has a very high mortality rate. the hospital tries to save her, but nothing appears to be working. during a visit, Mary apologizes for messing their life up and begs John to be happy. despite her possibly recovering, Mary passes away. while recovering Mary's objects from the room, John finds her sketchbook. a doctor informs her that "she knew" and that she was drawing "angels" before disappearing. John examines the sketchbook and finds repeated drawings of as monstrous, moth-looking creature with red eyes. supernatural hijinks ensue.
i really liked this movie and i think it's going to one i watch again at a later date. i highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good chiller where not everything is explained and the scariest things are what you don't see. absolutely check this one out.
Always an entertaining watch. Will Patton, as always, carries a supporting role masterfully.
