False Prophecies

Just seeing it can scare a film aficionado to death. Not the blurry, gray creature of The Mothman Prophecies but the phrase "based on a true story." To film buffs, the term is indicative of a half-baked premise trying desperately to obtain social relevance. Mothman fulfills this prophecy.

The original Mothman myth is about a red-eyed creature that pops up here and there in a small West Virginia town. And no, it's not a townie hopped on moonshine. Richard Gere plays a Washington Post reporter investigating the Mothman after his wife is injured in a car accident that she claims was caused by an appearance of you-know-who. Gere travels to West Virginia to investigate.

After his arrival, a sharp, sexy sheriff (Laura Linney) helps him chase down the mysterious figure. But instead of discovering anything, the two end up getting lost in a story that, aside from being creepy, has nowhere to go. At one point, the film ventures so far off course, you cannot help but wonder when the heroes are going to get back to the Mothman.

This is the key problem with the film--because the Mothman is so clearly a supernatural, non-existent phenomenon, the audience is left pondering not "how will this end" but "when will this end?" Director Mark Pellington successfully uses the too-normal to give us the shivers. In Mothman Pellington is working with too ordinary a plot to give us anything worth being scared over.

True or false, natural or supernatural, the scares in Mothman are largely too weak to set off a bug zapper.