Word: pellington
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Fray “How to Save a Life” Dir. Mark Pellington...
...look like...well...giant moths. Hence, the title The Mothman Prophecies. Their business is to warn the world of impending disasters. The possibility that their auguries may be of the self-fulfilling variety--that they may actually cause the chaos they predict--hovers unspoken as we watch director Mark Pellington's entertainingly eerie film...
...only fully documented fact in Richard Hatem's script is the disaster--a collapsing bridge--that brings the movie to its climax. Actually it plays more like a good X-Files episode--full of plausible details placed in the service of paranormal (not to say paranoid) whoppers. But director Pellington's touch is light and flickering, and his actors are solid and persuasive. If you let yourself go with The Mothman Prophecies, it is--in its lumpen, serious way--sort...
...sorely underrated Dr. T and the Women) as John Klein, a star reporter for The Washington Post who loses his wife (Debra Messing) in a car accident that may or may not have been predicted by a mysterious Mothman. A certain spark, courtesy of director Mark Pellington, energizes these opening scenes: the car accident itself is well-staged and slightly creepy, but the rest of the film lacks the tension required of a successful thriller. The film also lacks the elements required of a successful paranormal mystery; consequently, the whole movie falls into a sort of dead zone...
...Pellington, who helmed the mediocre Arlington Road, is competent, but his style seems a little too flashy for the material. Between every scene Pellington uses loud disjointed transitions, and though this is somewhat interesting at first, it soon becomes clear that he only does so because he has no clue how to segue from one scene to another. He also fails to set the proper tone and atmosphere, both of which should be vital in Mothman. Another problem is that his obvious visual tricks—superimposing images, Mothman-like figures and red eyes scattered all over, quick camera movements...