BE WARNED: There is no half-man, half-moth in The Mothman Prophecies.
Looking for something to watch last night I ventured away from my DVD shelf (latest additions, btw, include Ali G Indahouse, MASH, Blade II and The Shining) and hired out The M.P. I had no idea what to expect - the only reason for hiring out being I'd heard that it was ok. This is usually good enough for me so I decided to have a look.
Now, wanting to see a Man-Moth, the movie started well enough. Spooky atmosphere, low key, nice, eerie cinamotagraphy, interesting premise. Sitting, watching... after about 20 minutes I realise I have no freakin' idea what's happening and where this movie is going but I do my best to go with it. 40 minutes later, weird stuff happening, movie still looks good, movie is still spooky but I still have no freakin' idea what's happening and still no Man-Moth.
Man-Moth then turns up for a bit, looking nothing like a moth or a man, makes some weird prediction, then disappears again. It's here I start to realise that this is going to be the same as The French Connection - waiting for the greatest car chase ever and then getting to the end of the movie and realising I'd seen it without actually noticing. Movie draws closer to the end and i realise it's going to finish soon and all that's happened is a lot of atmosphere (although spooky). Suddenly there's a big finale (which reminded me of Arlington Rd - then I did my research and found out it was the same director), a dream sequence makes a bit of sense, then some Animal House style captions come up telling us the Mothman was never again heard from in this area. Credits roll. Aparrently this is based on a true story!?
Movie is over and I go "that's it?" Strange thing is that I actually liked it - it was genuinely spooky, looked pretty good (some really nice camera work) and had you go "what's gonna happen next?" even though you had no idea what had just happened. It made little sense, the Man-Moth was nowhere to be seen and it starred Richard Gere (who, previously, was 1 notch below Tom Hanks on my HATE scale but made it to the low RATES due to this movie. Go figure). Anyway, for some reason it gets a RATE but I have no idea why. I put on Blade II after this - it's not hard to understand a dude killing vampires. I needed a bit of a settler.
fin.
(Oh yeah, and it had the not-annoying chick from Will and Grace in it. Something weird happens to her. Not sure what it was but it was something weird and then weird stuff happens. She gets to see the Man-Moth though.)
Rating: RATE!