Amarillo College Ranger

Issue date: 2/22/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: www.movies.com Roy Solomon, played by Dylan McDermott, talks to 2-year-old Ben Solomon, played by Evan and Theodore Turner, in "The Messengers." [Click to enlarge]

It was Saturday night, so I decided that hanging out with friends and going to a movie would be better than sitting at home. We sacrificed seeing Because I Said So to see a scary movie, The Messengers.

The film starts with a flashback that is supposed to grab our attention and make us use the bathroom in our pants. The only part in the beginning that scared anybody in the theater, however, was a little boy screaming.

A city family, the Solomons, are moving to an old, abandoned, sunflower farm in the middle of nowhere. As they arrive, Jess Solomon (Kristen Stewart) notices a bunch of crows sitting on top of the house. The house looks like a two-story, rundown shack with vines growing up the sides and topped off with a flock of black birds that seem to be looking straight into your soul.

When I see a house like this, I don't think, "Oh, what a wonderful place to live." What is really going through my mind is "Run away, FAR away!" It's so typical for a scary movie to start out this way; but I guess if they didn't do it, there would no movie for people to waste their money on.

A few scenes into the movie, the Solomons receive a visitor, John Burwell (John Corbett). He offers to help around the farm in exchange for a room and meals. Who in their right mind would do that? Yes, many people allow a stranger to live and eat with them without having a background check done. That's why bad things happen when you open your door to a stranger. It's so predictable.

After Burwell arrives, strange things begin to unfold inside the house. You see the typical horror film scare tactics of passing shadows and ghosts along with the occasional physical flashback, where you see things that happened from the past in the present. The graphics in those parts are believable; a lot of work was put into them, and you can tell.

But the graphics are not what make a movie good. The plot line is so undeveloped, I thought about sleeping through most of the film. Not to mention you don't get to know the characters because they have no depth. There is nothing to help you understand why the family would make a move like this.

Continued...

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