The Mothman Prophecies

You know those movies that aren't any good, but you remember them anyways because the movie watching experience was good? Snakes on a Plane is one of those for me. So is Marley and Me. The next addition to that list, The Mothman Prophecies. This movie was so lame. A movie is almost surely off to a rocky start when these words flash across the screen: "Based on a true story." You can hear the death knell of ringing softly in the distance. What those words should actually say, more often than not, is this: "Loosely based on a frequently misreported and misinterpreted story." And I'm pretty sure that's what happened with this one. The movie is based off of a "nonfiction" book by John Keel. The screenplay, however, seem to have changed the main character's name to John Klein, portrayed in this movie by the ever jazzy Richard Gere. Listen, I'm by no means a Richard Gere hater. Chicago was good and Runaway Bride and Pretty Woman, no matter how weird and 90's, have their place. But he was just bad in this one. Not horrible, but not good. Laura Linney, who I really like, especially in The Truman Show and the HBO miniseries John Adams, was fine. Will Patton, Coach Yoast from Remember the Titans (who inexplicably doesn't have a picture up on IMDB) did the best job acting, I think. He plays this crazy guy who's been seeing things and starts hearing voices et cetera, et cetera. But he's pretty believable. Debra Messing's in this one too but only for like 12 minutes while she's alive and like 40 seconds after she's dead. I don't know what the most terrifying part of the movie, which supposedly was supposed to be scary in some kind of psychological way, was the 1 second jump scene when Richard Gere turns over in bed to find his dead wife laying next to him or the fact that the studio ponied up the money to pay "Grace" for under 13 minutes of work. Whatever.

The storyline was pretty ridiculous. In summary:

Successful investigative reporter's wife gets in a car crash, sees crazy stuff, then dies. Same reporter, two years later, finds himself in West Virgina in a town of people seeing the same crazy stuff. Successful investigative reporter investigates. He starts hearing voices. Cute cop lady thinks he's going crazy. He visits a paranormal author in Chicago who absolutely is crazy. A big bridge collapses and 36 people die. Successful investigative reporter thinks he could've stopped it.

That's it. There are no explanations, no conclusions, no closure. It's weird. It would be like if LOST started it's final season but didn't even start to answer the questions that a devoted follower has had for 5 seasons (oh wait, that's happening now!). I just don't get it. I guess they somehow wanted to be truthful to the book it was based off of, but I get the feeling that they fudged a lot of stuff, so why couldn't they have just fudged an appropriate ending? By the way, the previously mentioned bridge that collapses looks exactly like that Universal Studios ride "Earthquake" where they put you in this car and show you how they used to do disaster special effects back in the 80s and 90s. The ride is fun because your little car rocks and your dad might get a lap full of water from some sort of tidal wave. Not because it actually looks cool. That's kind of how this whole movie was actually. It was fun because jokes and not cinematic masterpiece ruled the room and because there was a chance someone who gets too scared at unscary movies might get a lap full of water of some kind. Not because it was actually a good movie. (And the sorry the movie poster is so creepy to look at.)