Director: Oxide Pang Chun, Danny Pang
Main Casts: Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller
John Corbett, Evan Turner
Watched: 9th May, 2007. Wednesday 5:10pm
Cinema: Cineleisure Damansara, Curve (4:C10)
You may find this piece of review covering much more details than previous ones I’ve written. I would go the length of reconstructing, I believe, the establishment of characters, because I feel a couple of problems happen here, and they nibbled on me as the story unfolds according to its trajectory. There will be comments in bold; those are my thoughts as I try to repaint some moods I personally felt when I watched. Of course, the opening sequence doesn’t leave behind the usual danger mood; the piano would come in together with high pitch strings assemble, choppy, disturbing, and very suggestive especially making you aware that there is only the movie, you and darkness…
• • • • • •
“Why are we running mummy?” the little boy was put down on a bed very hastily. “I need you to be a brave, brave boy, Michael.” His mother said to him.
The door to the room was wrecked open when Michael got shoved under the bed by his mother. He couldn’t see anything that was happening, only very loud terrifying shrieks and a thud, as if somebody was rammed roughly against the wall.
He knows he’s going to be getting it next. No. He saw an opened door, through which he could escape through the hallway – darted across the room, and clumsily shuffled down the staircase when he knocked straight into the chest of his elder sister.
“Run Michael, run!” he heard her said as the banister beside him was ripped off the staircase. He could only see what is in front of him, leaving his sister’s long bloody shriek falling behind him. The kitchen cabinet, under the stove! Michael closed himself in, and waited intensely, together with a musical toy tractor clutched tightly in his fist.
Light streamed onto Michael’s face. He stared right through the opening door. “What will it feel like to lose my life?”
Michael saw his last impression of the predator..
• • • • • •
A family is journeying quietly in a 4-seater MP-Van. Father, mother, teenage daughter and a little boy. No one seems to be interested in what anyone else on the car might be thinking about.
*Beep*
“We miss you” says a picture message showing a party through 16-year old Jessica’s Motorola. What is on your mind? She looks out of the car window. The journey continues.
Is this a flashback of the family being killed?
“Hke-Ehech-Ha” utters the little boy. His sister turned towards him, saying “Hey buddy”.
An old farmhouse awaits their arrival while the MPV was brought to a halt in front of the house, together with its cargo. The family comes out to briefly survey what stood in front of them “I know it looks run down, but wait till you see the inside” father assures them.
Inside the kitchen, Jessica begins unpacking their stuff; pulls open the tape that sealed a box when a cabinet catches her attention. She reaches out her hand, takes hold of the knob and peeps through the opening. Something is in there. It’s the truck Michael was holding in the opening sequence. She stretches her arms to lay hold of that thing… an inch behind; stretches again… still not reaching it, stretches again…
The toy tractor springs to life - “(instrumental bells) Old Mac Donald had a farm, E, ei, ~e.i~…(battery depletes)…”, and then stops as soon as it falls onto the floor. Jessica’s chest pumps heavy breaths through her airways.
“Within two days, I’m going to turn all these into as though they were new” on the field outside the house, the husband, Roy, affectionately promises his wife, Denise. She giggles and asked “Even that?” pointing to a tractor under a shed. “Rrrr… that will take a week.” He replied.
“This is it Denise. We’re gonna make it. This is something that I know.” Roy assures her, out of his experience growing up in his grandfather’s sunflower farm and learned how to plant them since young.
Jessica walks towards the staircase and treads cautiously as she makes each step up. A few steps before reaching 1st floor, she stops and turned to look back into the living room. The bright sunlight coming through from the windows falls on her troubled face as she takes a long minute to feed her eyes with this new place she’s going to live in. Jess, are you sensing something unusual, or are you just feeling the reluctance to adjust?
She reached the 1st floor, and saw that the window at the end of the short corridor allows her to see the field in front of the hou-“WHAM!” before she could blink her eyes; reflexively takes a step backwards to realise that a black crow slammed itself onto the window, then fluttered to stop on the surface near the window sills.
Jessica regains her posture, and began to walk downstairs. Roy was walking up too. At the turning he asks Jess, “What do you think about this place?” To which she replied “Neat” then she walks down. After all the surprises, you haven’t felt any strangeness in here yet??? What are you thinking?
Ben stood in the bedroom Denise while she yanks and lays the bed sheet. “Hey Benny…” She turns to smile at her 4-year old son behind her; while yanking the bed sheet to waist height; a pair of grey legs stands under the sheet, someone else is in the room! Ben just watches. With an eye level lower than your mother’s waist, you saw the legs didn’t you, Ben?
At night, Jessica sits by her bed, looking at a framed photograph. Roy walks slowly in, smiles tenderly, asking her to get some sleep. The framed photograph on Jessica’s bed briefly catches his glance, so he sits down at the edge of her bed, turns to her saying gently “The only way we can make it, Jess, is to give it a try”
“But it’s so quiet out here”
“I know… It just needs some getting used to.”
Jessica thinks a minute, nods briefly and Roy then seals the agreement as their hands met with a clasp.
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If you felt some jarring moments as you read the paragraphs, that’s probably similar to what I felt during the show. No doubt, the story revolves around the family, and it is a strange family to begin with. They seem too unnaturally polite and too separated from each other to look like one; as if they were a bunch of randomly picked people from a neighborhood, came together to play family members swap.
I think they appear unconvincing to me partially because of the way they relate with other family members and with the camera lens – (1) How close are they physically from each other, (2) How they do things together (3) How the camera ‘sees’ them
- Proximity
I’m assuming that families normally appear together fairly often, without much space in between them (typically hold hands/ rub against each other’s garments/ hugs each other…), and sometimes kissing each other on the forehead or other places.
But in this show, the Solomons are very sparing with their physical contact. Between husband and wife, there were neither kissing nor necking, not even affectionate touches.
The only character with the most relationship establishment was the little boy, Ben, who got carried by his parents and sister. Even then, he was only held onto their shoulder height. No nose rubbing, kissing, snuggling, prolonged hugging, tucking to bed etc… - Interaction
The moment when the Solomons stepped into the house, whatever creature in the house came in to manipulate most of their choices. The family members would always have time to explore the house, and discovering its peculiarities.
Come to think of it, the interaction between casts seems to be very “digital”. Especially the scene where Roy talked to Jessica, it felt like it was purposely designed just so that she can call him “Dad” and briefly clasp his hand – no subtlety, yep, that’s the word.
Any reference to the past was purely verbal, stating what happened in the past in a catalogue way. The events created to invoke conversation/ interaction just seem too well designed. Almost fool proof. - Camera Framing
I suspect another reason why I felt the lack of relationship, is probably because of how the camera ‘chooses’ to see the characters. For more than 60 percent of the movie time, only one individual can be seen on screen, even if they are in a conversation. Over shoulder shots that helps facilitate empathy were only sparsely used here.
Apart from conversations, I believe it’s also because the characters are “confined” to their individual area. The farmer father for example is almost always in the field outside the house. The mother is almost always in the kitchen or in the bedroom. The daughter is almost always venturing around the house alone or with her brother Ben. And Ben is almost always looking around the house and stretching out his hands trying to grasp what seems to be air.
The story puts the individual casts in different locations most of the time; appearing on screen alone as they react to the oddity they discover around the house.
The Ride
As I read other people’s review about the film, I had a particular resonance with this one:
“The objective view gives the audience too much room to unravel its schematic plot…”(1)Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times, 2007
This film explores every character’s point of view giving it a narrative documentary kind of texture. As you are watching it, you’ll be given almost equal opportunity to discover what each character sees and thinks. Every character here represents a different explanation for why the vision of a one big happy family is not coming together.
We as the audience, are given sort of an “Insider’s view” from the very beginning, we know that the house is definitely haunted with some very malicious creatures. And I guess, having that viewpoint creates tension. Because then, I would prefer Jessica not be so daring to venture into the cellar; then, I would prefer the parents to get their share of fright quicker; then, I would prefer little Benny to not “play around” with the creatures that he sees…
Yet the resolution is so glaring, that I began to anticipate what would happen next. Which is not good for a horror show, because I had so much time to prepare for any jolting images the film may have to offer!
The Fallen Mystery
Thinking back, my guess is that the Pang brothers might have been planning a horrifying mystery solver kind of story, to keep the audience terrified yet curiously hooked on to the flow of the story at the same time. Having said that, it really didn’t come clear to me during the show because I wasn’t even sure if there were any missing link.
If the mystery bit had work as planned, the opening sequence should have served as a cue for the audience to wonder who/ what killed the family members. As the new family moves in, we should have suspected that the same creature was harassing them, only to realise that the creatures manifested, were actually those that got killed in the opening sequence. Enlightened by this knowledge, we should then have raced back to the supposedly even more rousing question, “Who then, is the killer that these creatures are trying to tell us?” Then finally comes the resolution bit, where the killer identified himself. So it turned out that their temporary worker killed his family but lost his memory after that. Yet it happened that he regained his memory, but was distorted and he began to believe that the Solomons were his family members, so proceeded to re-enact what was his attempt to stop his wife and child from leaving him – the killing, in the opening sequence.
I think what marred the mystery, is that the Pang brothers antagonized the creatures that harassed the Solomon family, but provided very little information explaining the harassments. The creatures just seem to be robotic beings, existing simply to destroy lives, without any apparent cause or history. Their expression of hurt feelings over unjustified violence was also not clear.
This miss-representation also becomes a problem when they try to resolve the story using Jessica. Being a victim of a horrifying encounter with the creatures, it seemed superficial that Jessica would have any trace of curiosity towards why the creatures attacked her. It felt even more unbelievable that she would all of a sudden conjure up empathy with them, and then desperately figure out how they became that way! This is where all the miss-establishments blew the story out of proportion.
It might have worked better if there were explicit communications shown between the creatures and Jessica such as letters, visualizations or symbols. That way, the personality of the creatures will provide more opportunities for us to feel curious about their death, and justify having Jessica solve the mystery.
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I would still applaud “The Messengers” for its outstanding cinematography. I especially liked the lighting designs applied, to give the picture an elegant look. Although the Pang brothers might have casted the movie with more ‘suitable’ faces or created some stereotypical western impressions, the film does show what happens when a stereotypical eastern family puts on a western skin.
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References:
1) Sam Adams (2007). The Messengers: Critic Review. Los Angeles Times.
Taken from: http://www.fandango.com/themessengers_98234/criticreviews.
Taken from: http://www.fandango.com/themessengers_98234/criticreviews.
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Sharon Chong, Published 13th May, 2007
Cineleisure Damansara, Curve
:o)
Sharon Chong, Published 13th May, 2007
Cineleisure Damansara, Curve
:o)
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