The Messengers (2007)
Average Rating: 3.6/10
Reviews Counted: 84
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 74
The Messengers is an atmospheric but derivative rip-off of countless other horror movies.
Average Rating: 3.5/10
Critic Reviews: 21
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 20
The Messengers is an atmospheric but derivative rip-off of countless other horror movies.
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Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 470,753
My Rating
Movie Info
Hong Kong horror specialists Danny and Oxide Pang (The Eye, Bangkok Haunted) ponder the paranormal sensitivities of young innocents in this tale of an unsuspecting family who falls prey to a malevolent entity after moving to into a haunted sunflower farm. Roy (Dylan McDermott) and Denise Solomon (Penelope Ann Miller) have decided to give up life in Chicago and relocate their family to secluded North Dakota sunflower farm. While the tranquil sway of the lush yellow fields at first offers a
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Cast
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Kristen Stewart
Jess Solomon -
Dylan McDermott
Roy Solomon -
Penelope Ann Miller
Denise Solomon -
John Corbett
John Burwell -
Evan Turner
Ben Solomon -
Theodore Turner
Ben Solomon -
Dustin Milligan
Bobby -
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The Messengers Trailer & Photos
All Critics (87) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (77) | DVD (16)
The MessengersI/i> is textbook, and the course it's teaching is HSL: Horror as a Second Language.
Top CriticMany of the images feel over-familiar, and the shocks a mite too forced.
No one says, "Gimme the bat, Wendy," or, "Here's Johnny!" But they come close.
The well-amplified scares are so perfunctory as to be laughable. 'What's up with the crows?' bitches Kristen Stewart, clearly not up on her Hitchcock or any Asian thriller of the past ten years.
The Asian-horror-movie moment feels long since passed, both here and abroad. Let our zombies walk or even sprint again! Give our creepy kids back their pupils!
Sadly, the movie just doesn't deliver chills.
Thai twin-brother directors Oxide and Danny Pang did primo horror work on 2002's Hong Kong cornea-transplant flick The Eye, but on their first American film their atmospheric efforts are usurped by a brain-dead script that seems written by a 12-year-old.
Creepy haunted house flick is nothing new.
There are flashes of good imagery in The Messengers, but [they] work better in the trailer, unencumbered by the dreary plot.
Patchwork filmmaking designed by a corporate mentality devoted only to the defense of the lowest common denominator. The viewer is assumed to be stupid and easily duped.
The only message worth relaying about The Messengers is: Avoid.
Um filme falho (especialmente com relação ao seu roteiro), mas que oferece belos exemplos do dom que os cineastas têm para criar planos e cenas perturbadores.
A film so filled with clichés of the genre and plot points so dumb that even a novice would end up laughing.
Una más de niños que ven fantasmas, totalmente insignificante y olvidable y plagada de lugares comunes que ya no asustan ni sorprenden a nadie.
The problem with The Messengers is that it simply doesn't offer up much of anything new.
The scares have been booby-trapped brilliantly throughout it.
...irredeemably uneventful and - ultimately - hopelessly derivative...
The Pang Brothers. I'm thinking Danny and Oxide should change their names to Hit and Miss. Why, you ask? Because that is the perfect description of their work.
The DVD has just enough special features - not so many as to numb the senses, but contains basically what you might be interested in knowing about in regards to making the film.
Yet not even the Pang brothers' sense of panache can redeem what is a lame script by Mark Wheaton.
Audience Reviews for The Messengers
Super Reviewer
My main criticism is that there seemed to be something wrong with the soundtrack to this (maybe just on the UK blu ray, I don't know), the sound affects were really, really loud, while the speaking bits I could hardly hear. I had to keep adjusting the volume, and then jump through the roof when the scary bits came on. In the end I just turned the volume down lower and put on the subtitles. Not really an ideal way to watch a movie!
Super Reviewer
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- Jess Solomon: Please believe me I'm not making this up!
- Denise Solomon: Jess just stop!
- Jess Solomon: Dad I'm really scared can't we just go home?
- Roy Solomon: Jessica this is home, you have to get used to that.
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