The Messengers

The MessengersI/i> is textbook, and the course it's teaching is HSL: Horror as a Second Language.

Many of the images feel over-familiar, and the shocks a mite too forced.

No one says, "Gimme the bat, Wendy," or, "Here's Johnny!" But they come close.

The well-amplified scares are so perfunctory as to be laughable. 'What's up with the crows?' bitches Kristen Stewart, clearly not up on her Hitchcock or any Asian thriller of the past ten years.

The Asian-horror-movie moment feels long since passed, both here and abroad. Let our zombies walk or even sprint again! Give our creepy kids back their pupils!

Sadly, the movie just doesn't deliver chills.

Thai twin-brother directors Oxide and Danny Pang did primo horror work on 2002's Hong Kong cornea-transplant flick The Eye, but on their first American film their atmospheric efforts are usurped by a brain-dead script that seems written by a 12-year-old.

There are flashes of good imagery in The Messengers, but [they] work better in the trailer, unencumbered by the dreary plot.

Patchwork filmmaking designed by a corporate mentality devoted only to the defense of the lowest common denominator. The viewer is assumed to be stupid and easily duped.

The only message worth relaying about The Messengers is: Avoid.

Um filme falho (especialmente com relação ao seu roteiro), mas que oferece belos exemplos do dom que os cineastas têm para criar planos e cenas perturbadores.

A film so filled with clichés of the genre and plot points so dumb that even a novice would end up laughing.