by iakul

Created on: July 28, 2010

The Mothman Prophecies is loosely based on the 1975 book of the same name by John Keel. While it does share the same name, the film does deviate much from the book, so don't watch it expecting a reproduction of the book version .

The protagonist of the film, John Klein (Richard Gere) is a reporter who gets involved in a car accident together with his wife, Mary (Debra Messing), at the beginning of the film. While they both sustained non-fatal injuries, the post-accident checkup revealed that Mary had a brain tumor, which would prove fatal to her. Shortly after, John discovers drawings Mary made of a strange black winged creature she saw on the night of the accident. As Mary was driving at that time and the accident was caused by her swerving to avoid something on the road, it is implied that this creature was the cause.

Two years later, John gets lost while driving and finds himself at the town of Point Pleasant.  Here, he discovers that the townspeople are reporting strange supernatural encounters, weird lights and strange phone calls. He begins to investigate, and is aided by the town sheriff Connie Mills (Laura Linney).

John discovers that all the strange occurrences can be traced to a strange entity known as the Mothman, a figure that is said to appear before upcoming disasters. He becomes convinced that the upcoming disaster will happen at he chemical plant after meeting an expert on the Mothman, Alexander Leek (Alan Bates)

Towards the end of the film, while John is on Point Pleasant's Silver Bridge, the voice of Indrid Cold (Bill Laing), which is heard over the strange phone calls, intones, "Great tragedy on the river Ohio". It is only then that John realises that he has been mistaken and that the disaster will happen here. John tries to get people off the bridge, but the bridge collapses before he manages to do anything.

All in all, the film does a good job in creating suspense and is quite a good watch if you are a fan of the psychological thriller genre. Fans of paranormal expecting an reenactment of  the 1967 disaster might be disappointed though, since as I mentioned at the beginning, the film deviates much from sources. For example, Indrid Cold and the Mothman, while actually two separate entities, have been merged in the film. The film is also set in the modern day 21st century, instead of 1967.

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