Delayed Reaction: The Messengers

Premise: A family from Chicago moves to a farm and discover supernatural occurrences in their house.

 

I came of age during a really bad time for horror. The mid-90s had the meta-reassessment of horror with Scream. 1999 had the dual successes of The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project. Then I turned 13 in 2000 and for most of the 2000s the horror was really underwhelming. M. Night Shyamalan learned the wrong lessons from the success of The Sixth Sense and made a series of mostly disappointing twist-based movies that leaned more on thrills than scares. Somehow, they responded to the Blair Witch success with a sequel that wasn't even found footage. The influence of Scream sadly led to the Scary Movie franchise - among my least favorite movies ever - rather than a generation of smart, subversive horror. The list of forgettable or middling horror movies for the next 6-7 years is long. Wrong Turn. 13 Ghosts. The Skeleton Key. Final Destination. They kept turning to horror remakes that no one really wanted (House of Wax, Prom Night, Black Christmas) or didn't quite measure up (Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). The big franchise to come out of that era was Saw, which is not a style I care for.

 

That's not to say the whole period was bad for horror. The Ring is among my favorite movies. Trick r' Treat has slowly been discovered over time. There were foreign imports like The Descent and Rec that I eventually found. 28 Days Later has amazing horror elements, although it's more of a thriller.

 

Horror eventually picked back up for me when the found footage style and explosion of digital filmmaking lowered the barrier for entry and let a lot more exciting voices in. When I was a teen and into my early 20s though, The Messengers is the kind of product I was dealing with.

 

The Messengers isn't exactly a horrible movie. The cast is good. Kristen Stewart at any age is a plus. The movie uses crows effectively to create unease. This movie simply makes no impression. Literally every time I have to type the title, I have to double-check that I don't mean The Strangers or The Crazies. Even having just watched this, I doubt I could distinguish a plot point between this, Hide n' Seek, or the Amityville Horror remake. I'm actually amazed this movie made $35 million. I mean, I would've guessed it made no more than feardotcom money ($14 million). Oh well. At least it stuck to only 90 minutes, so it's not a lot of time wasted.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend