The Messengers [2007] Pt.2

Posting for Saturday, 8/13.

Here's that scene that started all this.

Continuing this harrowing tale, the police arrive and the parents return to find...nothing. All the smashed furniture has reverted back to normal, leaving no sign anything unusual happened. This doesn't help the trust issues between Jess and Denise. Lolz, those ghosts done played you, girl!

Even though Ben also saw all the weirdness he can not corroborate her story. It turns out something Jess did before the movie has rendered him mute. Denise mentioned that Jess couldn't drive Roy to the hospital with a suspended license so I assume she drove drunk or something, crashed the car and got Ben hurt.

A creepy whisper awakens Jess in the night. She promptly finds Ben, also awake and standing in his crib. She recruits him to point out where the ghosts are walking. Somehow she cannot see them and they disappear when she turns her gaze upon them. That last part, I don't know why. Their appearances do not frighten the boy so why bother showing yourselves to him? And if they go so far as to make her hallucinate the house being destroyed and physically drag her into the cellar, why hide?

The adults, including John, do not believe her fantastical sounding story so she goes to the one person who will listen to her: Bobby, a boy of similar age from town whom she met earlier. He tells her about rumours that the house is haunted but apparently there is no knowledge that the previous family died. All he knows is that the family up and left a few years back, probably due to bad harvests.

Jess, being white, decides to go investigate the house's past. She finds a clue in the attic but of course the ghosts don't pass up this excellent opportunity to scare her a little bit. Black goop comes out of the floorboards and the ghouls come crawling on the ceiling, from under the staircase and up out of the ground. All of this disappears as quickly as it appeared and Jess dashes outside. The sun shines brightly over the fields of sunflowers. She starts to break down, wondering what is happening to her.

They do look creepy. I'll admit that!

The ghosts begin to step their game up, providing her with visions of the ill-fated mother in her final moments, whispered words and moans, and creeping about on the edges of her sight. The mother's ghost leads her to the barn where she finds a creepy little boy. He does the old lunge-and-screech. Jess ends up in the hospital with some minor cuts and bruises shaped like a tight gripping hand. Once again, the ghosts play her; the wounds look self-inflicted! Hohoho!

Now I have to wonder why the ghosts haven't been tormenting the mom and dad. Plus, they look like they actually get along with Ben! Go figure....
The family gets in a big fight and Jess takes off on her bike. By happy happenstance, Bobby comes by in his truck and gives her a ride. She reveals the story of how her parents came to lose their trust in her and how Ben lost his ability to speak. They go into town to look for clues.
Meanwhile, Denise speaks with Ben and she starts to get inklings that something IS going on here, something paranormal.
Meanwhile, John notices some odd behaviour amongst the crows.

I think they've been feasting on infected flesh....

It turns out John is actually the father of the previous family. The harvest of sunflowers that year was poor and things weren't working out between he and his wife, Mary. At the beginning of the movie she was packing some suitcases in preparation to leave him. He returned to the house in a rage, killing everyone. In the present time, he notices Denise placing a suitcase on the porch. Finally, the ghosts appeared before her and scared her straight. Unfortunately, John awakens as well. It seems he repressed his memories of his murderous rampage but these come bursting out now. He falls under the delusion that Denise is Mary.
Up until this point the acting in this movie hasn't been too bad, no Oscar performances here but no Razzie's either. They all start to decline now though.
John chases the wife and kids into the cellar where he gets taken down by the ghosts of his family. Nice... but why didn't they pick which side they were on earlier?
John tries to drag Jess down with him but both her parents grab her arms and tug her back out. Yay! Family power!! Flash forward some time, Roy and Denise are good again, Ben speaks, Bobby helps out on the farm. All around happy day caloo callay!

Crappy horror film. It had moments though. Just moments. You shouldn't watch this for the horror, but there are other reasons you might. (O_<)

The Messengers [2007] Pt.1

A long time ago, I saw a horror movie trailer. Years later, I could only remember one scene from that trailer: a mother is making a bed, she fluffs up the sheet and for a moment a pair of ashen gray legs appears standing under the sheet. That was a great scene. I have no illusions about the quality of the rest of that movie but that was undoubtedly a good scene. Unfortunately, I could remember nothing else about the movie. No actor names, not the year, not the title, nothing. Only that scene. But guess what? Hahaha, I wasn't the only horror fan out there that scene stuck to. A Google search for the unlikely search terms: [legs under bed sheet horror] brought up a Yahoo Answers query as the first result. BAM! The Messengers [2007]. Try it out! I think it's still the first result right now. Man, the internet is amazing.

I Youtube-d The Messengers trailer and it all came rushing back. This time though I recognized some faces. Guess who is in this movie? A pre-Twilight fame Kristen Stewart! Her acting was as wooden as ever but that's not a big problem here because I have no expectations of this movie. No wait, that's not entirely true. I expect this movie to be bad. There, that's better, hahahaha.

The house will be haunted. That's obvious right away, even if you didn't see the trailer. The beginning of the movie offers us a flashback. A mother rushes into a bedroom with her son and thells him to hide under the bed and everything will be alright, etc. Loud footsteps come up the stairs the boy sees his mother thrown across the room, hitting the wall. Of course, the kid is NOT ok sitting in plain sight "under" his bed and he seems to know it. He scrambles out and runs into his sister, they both dash downstairs and the boy hides under a table while his sister gets pushed over the banister. Wait. That isn't entirely true, either. I'm giving you the wrong idea. He crouches under the hall table like it's an earthquake. What he doesn't do is hide. The line of sight between himself and the top of the stairs is uninterrupted. The sister crawls toward him and urges him to run. Dumbass kid scurries around the corner and hides in a cabinet under the kitchen sink. Apparently, Hiding is this child's weak point cuz he ain't good at it. Going outside and hiding in the fields doesn't occur to him. He closes the door and sniffles quite loudly before the menace, I assume it's a demon-possessed father or something, grabs him and disposes of him. And there was much rejoicing. (If you get that reference, you're cool. If not, you are not cool.)

Years later, a new family, the Solomons, move in. The father, Dick, his daughter Sally, and son Tommy- oh sorry. I mean father Roy, mother Denise, daughter Jess and son Ben. The house is located somewhere out in North Dakota on a sunflower farm. It seems Jess did something to cause her parents to lose trust in her, though it isn't revealed til later.
As the family moves in, unpacks boxes and such, we get a good dose of jump scares from innocuous things. You know nothing is going to happen so early but they have to maintain a certain level of tension you know? And to remind you this is, in fact, a horror movie.
That bedsheet scene shows up around this time and I seriously considered calling it done straight away but I can't watch a fragment of a movie. That would be unseemly.
One of the most contrived jump scares comes from an old man who appears without a sound, offering Roy a job at the bank. I don't know about you but when was the last time someone who was looking for you walked up and stood 5 feet from you without making any sound to get your attention beforehand. You'd think the old man tried to scare Roy intentionally.
Weird noises and bangs abound, some aggressive crows (dare I say....angry birds?) harass Roy and his seeds, etc. A laborer, John, shows up and gets work helping out around the farm. The only thing that actually earns its creepy points is a ghost of the previous family's son who crawls on the ceiling. Only  Ben sees him, and for some reason he isn't frightened. This is ridiculous. I don't want to hear anything about how innocent he is. The ghost is pale, moves in a stop-motion fashion, and looks like it's rotting. If this kid isn't scared it is because he lacks self-preservation instincts.

It's a reflection in a spoon.

One day Roy cuts his hand on the tractor and needs to go to the hospital. This gives us another opportunity for the mother to hint that she doesn't trust Jess to drive nor to watch over Ben while they are gone. Eventually, Roy convinces Denise to drive him to the hospital and leave Ben in Jess's care. Too bad. While the folks are out the house ghosts decide to fuck with her a little bit. They smash lamps and shatter the banister, throw chairs around, knock shelves and china off the walls, make screaming noises, etc. While all this happens Ben calmly follows a wind-up toy around the house. It leads Jess to the basement staircase where pale rotting hands drag her backwards into the darkness, all the while Ben watches her placidly. What a dumbass kid. Not to mention an Oscar-winning actor, for sure.

Alright guys, that's it for now. (___- -)=3