The Mothman Prophecies (film)

The Mothman Prophecies
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Mark Pellington
Produced by	Tom Rosenberg Gary W. Goldstein Richard Hatem Gary Lucchesi Richard S. Wright Terry McKay Adrienne Gruben Rachel Hudgins
Screenplay by	Richard Hatem
Based on	The Mothman Prophecies John Keel
Starring	Richard Gere Laura Linney Debra Messing Will Patton Lucinda Jenney
Music by	tomandandy
Cinematography	Fred Murphy
Editing by	Brian Berdan
Distributed by	Screen Gems
Release date(s)	January 25, 2002 (2002-01-25)
Running time	119 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$42 million
Box office	$54,639,865

The Mothman Prophecies is a 2002 psychological horror film directed by Mark Pellington, based on the 1975 book of the same name by parapsychologist and Fortean author John Keel. The screenplay was written by Richard Hatem. The film stars Richard Gere as John Klein, a reporter who researches the legend of the Mothman.

The film claims to be based on actual events that occurred between November 1966 and December 1967 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Critical reviews were mixed, but the film was a modest financial success.

Plot

John Klein (Richard Gere) is a hotshot Washington, D.C. reporter whose life suddenly takes a turn after he and his wife Mary (Debra Messing) are involved in a car accident after she apparently tried to avoid something on the road. Although she suffers a non-fatal head injury, Mary's CAT scans show that she has an inoperable brain tumor diagnosed as glioblastoma. After she dies, John discovers an assortment of cryptic drawings she made of a strange black winged creature she saw on the night of the fateful accident.

Two years later, while driving to Richmond, Virginia, John gets lost and inexplicably finds himself almost five hours off-course, arriving in the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. He soon becomes entangled in the personal stories of residents and in a chain of mysterious events, wherein townspeople report strange supernatural encounters, along with weird lights and phone calls. With the help of town sheriff Connie Mills (Laura Linney), John begins to investigate. He determines that the common link is an apparently supernatural creature known as the Mothman, whose appearances seem to foretell disasters. Things take a decidedly personal and frightening turn when he realizes the eerie connections between his wife’s drawings, eyewitness accounts of the Mothman, and phone calls from an other-worldly, seemingly malevolent entity named Indrid Cold.

The Mothman becomes a personal obsession for Klein. He meets an expert on the subject, Alexander Leek (Alan Bates), who convinces him that there may be a tragedy in store for the small town.

Production

Kittanning Citizens Bridge

Filming

The budget was cut by $2,000,000 before filming began. Aside from a few opening scenes filmed in Washington, D.C., the entire movie was filmed in the areas of Pittsburgh and Kittanning in Pennsylvania. The scenes of Gere sitting on a park bench are on the University of Pittsburgh campus. Road montages were filmed on Pennsylvania Route 28, and the Chicago scenes are completely shot in downtown Pittsburgh’s Mellon Square and Trinity Churchyard environs as well as the entrance to the Duquesne Club. The "Chemical Plant" featured in the movie is actually a power station owned by Reliant Energy in Elrama, Pennsylvania. Point Pleasant scenes were shot in Kittanning, Pennsylvania. The collapse of the Silver Bridge was actually filmed at the Kittanning Citizens Bridge in downtown Kittanning. Scenes shot at Gordon Smallwood’s house were filmed in Washington County on Pennsylvania Route 917. Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Airport serves as backdrop for the airfield scenes. Despite this relocation, several police officers from Point Pleasant appeared as extras.

Direction

Director Mark Pellington had a cameo role as a bartender.

Music

Several artists contributed music to the venture. A remix single of "Halflight" by the band, Low, was featured in the movie.

Reception

The Mothman Prophecies received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reports 52% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based on 135 reviews, with a rating of 5.5/10. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it two stars out of four, calling it "unfocused" and "meandering," but praised the direction by Mark Pellington "whose command of camera, pacing and the overall effect is so good, it deserves a better screenplay."

Differences from the book

The film adaptation of The Mothman Prophecies concentrates more on the personal stories and personalities of the characters and less on the investigation of UFOs and other strange phenomena upon which much of the book is based. Also, it is set in the modern day rather than in the 1960s, when the alleged sightings of the Mothman entity occurred.

The majority of the characters are also re-imagined. All have been renamed and in some cases, several characters have been merged into one or altered in some other way. Several have been removed entirely, such as the newspaper editor Mary Hyre, although her death somewhat mirrors one of the characters in the movie. The Men in Black, or “MIBs,” in the book are removed; Indrid Cold, a relatively benign being in the book, is something more sinister in the film; and the Mothman itself rarely appears in the film. Instead, it is used to evoke subtle notes of supernatural horror for the filmgoer, versus functioning as the central, mysterious and provocative character as in the book.

In reality, 46 people died in the collapse of the Silver Bridge, not 36. Also, the film's claim at the end credits of the collapse of the Silver Bridge never being explained is incorrect, the incident was found to be caused by the failure of an eye-bar in a suspension chain.

Home media

Mothman Prophecies was released on DVD on June 2002, with a two-disc Special Edition DVD set released later, in May 2003.

External links

• The Mothman Prophecies at the Internet Movie Database
• The Mothman Prophecies at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Mothman Prophecies - History vs. Hollywood at Chasing the Frog
• Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review
• A website discussing the film
• Q&A with director Mark Pellington