#(which none of the same people- actors producers ect- were involved in making)

[all-souls-matinee]

Quick-bite reviews: The Messengers (2007) dir. Danny and Oxide Pang

The Solomon family- overconfident dad, shrewish mom, troubled teen daughter, and goodboy baby son- move from Chicago to rural North Dakota for a fresh start in a rundown farmhouse.

No one sets out to make the world's most generic haunted house movie, so this sets itself apart with a focus on kids as the protagonists and a big twist at the end. Neither is very successful. Kind of fascinating to see a post-Zathura pre-Twilight Kristen Stewart (I wonder if this performance influenced that casting decision), but I don't think kids should be actors, and predicating so much on goodboy baby son- a literal toddler- is never a good move. The twist is seen coming a mile off, and while not uninteresting does nothing to subvert, or even comment on, the family values these movies are always so eager to impart (was actually cracking up when 'boy character the daughter's age' is brought into the fold with... underpaid farm labor?) Filming-wise, the excessive CG is dated, conversations are treated to lots of nauseating camera tricks and then end abruptly, or it suffers in the opposite direction by holding on silent reactions for minutes at a time. I, who like Tarkovsky movies, tired of seeing worried-looking eyebrow from nine different angles. That's a lot of words to say this thing sucks, so let me qualify that it's not uniquely awful or anything; by the goalposts its contemporaries were setting it's downright 'fine.' I like the specificity of being set on a sunflower farm (did not know it only takes sunflowers three months to grow- clever timeframe!), I like that there are actually reasonable explanations behind people's actions, and I even like that there are some unique moves being made with the scares (crows, sludge!!!), it's just that at the end of the day it's all in service of jumpscaring 00s teens, and it shows.

Buy a ticket? I usually watch movies all in one sitting but I turned this off for like four days because the dad flirted by saying "I've been reading the farmer-sutra."