Opening 18 Oct 2007
Directed by:
Oxide Pang Chun
Writing credits:
Mark Wheaton, Todd Farmer
Principal actors:
Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller, John Corbett, Evan Turner
Jess (Kristen Stewart) and Roy (Dylan McDermott) move into a dilapidated farm house in the middle of a neglected field. They bring their children: small son Ben and teenage daughter Denise (Penelope Ann Miller). Ben has not spoken for many months. Denise wonders what she did to deserve being uprooted and set down in this no-man’s land.. The family scrubs the floors and cranks up the tractor, and soon the house is sparkly and the fields are full of bobbing sunflowers, their main crop. Unexpected help arrives in the form of Burwell Rollins (John Corbett), who doesn’t care – beware, beware – if he ever gets paid. Is that weird? Soon the ghosts come out, in this case a mother and her children who had been murdered in this house. There is the usual growling, screaming, menacing music, cawing crows, flying furniture, flickering lights, and grabbing hands. The children see these things, but the adults are sceptical until they can no longer ignore the truth. The Messengers has all the components, traditional or cliché depending on your outlook, of a haunted-house movie. The directors of this US/Canadian film are twin brothers from Hong Kong named Danny Pang and Oxide Pang Chun. (Becky Tan)
