‘The Mothman Prophecies’
Lakeshore Entertainment, 2002

starring: Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Debra Messing and Will Patton
directed by: Mark Pellington

the plot: After purchasing a new house, reporter John Klein (Gere) and his wife Mary (Messing) are involved in a bizarre car crash. Klein is unharmed, but Mary later dies from her injuries. During her final days, Mary makes drawings of a shadowy, red-eyed and winged figure. Months later, on his way to an interview, Klein finds that he has unknowingly driven himself to a small West Virginia town, hundreds of miles from his destination. There, he encounters Gordon (Patton), who claims that Klein has been harassing him every night for the last week. Gordon also says he’s been plagued with visions of a winged, red-eyed monster, known among the townspeople as “Mothman.” Soon, Gordon, Klein and the town’s sheriff begin receiving strange messages—cryptic phone calls from someone named “Indrid Cold” and warnings about future disasters. As Klein digs deeper into the mystery of the Mothman, he finds that no one who encounters the Mothman escapes unscathed.

why it’s good: “The Mothman Prophecies” is a creepy, moody B-movie that is unfairly underrated. Director Mark Pellington keeps the atmosphere nice and spooky, with plenty of blurry Mothman shots, glaring red eyes and a few choice jump scares. Screenwriter Richard Hatem (who went on to create the short-lived supernatural drama “Miracles”) keeps the story focused on the humans, rather than the Mothman (although he does perhaps pack too much mumbo jumbo into the screenplay), and the movie manages to effectively capture all of the high strangeness going on in John Keel’s allegedly non-fiction book of the same name, on which the film is based. Gere gives a decent performance as a halting, emotionally worn-out journalist, although the rest of the cast is decidedly average. But for all the paranoid atmospherics and frightful happenings, “Mothman” does fall apart at the end, mostly because of a decided lack of resolution.

why you should own it: Keep “Mothman” on your rental list. It’s worth watching, if only to get a glimpse of some of the ideas and themes Hatem would use in “Miracles (also on DVD). Columbia/Tri-Star’s special edition DVD features a documentary about the real Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant, W.Va., in the late 1960s, a making-of featurette and a music video.