by Luke Rasmussen

Created on: November 28, 2007

Mark Pellington's The Mothman Prophecies is a tremendous movie for fans of psychological thrillers and paranormal activity.

Mothman Prophecies is Pellington's second movie. His first movie, Arlington Road, is just psycologically thrilling as Mothman Prophecies. Pellington uses dark imagery and chilling music in this movie, as he did in Arlington Road. The soundtrack was done by Tomandandy, who add a dark, mystical experience to the movie. Tomandandy also did some music for the orignal score for Arlington Road.

While Arlington Road alludes to real-life events (i.e. Ruby Ridge, the Oklahoma City bombing), Mothman Prophecies is about a real-life event - the 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, WV. People reported seeing the Mothman in the months leading up to the bridge collapse in West Virginia.

As the movie will tell you, the Mothman is a "winged-creature" known as the "nocturnal butterfly." The Mothman also makes his presence known with two bright red eyes. Apparently, as they discover in the movie, the Mothman shows its ugly face in order to warn people of impending doom. Whether it is true or not, the movie alludes to people seeing the Mothman before the Chernobyl disaster and also the Galveston hurricane.

Speaking of the reference to the hurricane, the timing in this movie is way off. The movie refers to the Galveston hurricane happening in 1969. The Galveston hurricane was in the early 1900s. The movie is also not set in 1967, when the actual bridge collapse happened. It is actually taking place in 2004.

The collapse also happened on December 15, 1967. The movie has the collapse happening on Christmas Eve.

Richard Gere plays a reporter (John Klein) for the Washington Post. In the movie, he is headed to Richmond, VA to interview their governor, as he is supposedly a candidate for the presidential election. Somehow, he drives 400 miles out of his way and ends up in Point Pleasant, WV. In the movie, he tells the local cop about his 400-mile detour, "I have no memory of it."

Gere's character (Klein) finds out that "things have been a little strange around here lately" from the lady cop and he starts to investigate. People have been seeing the creature for some time. Incidentally, it is the same creature Klein's wife saw shortly before she was killed in a car accident. She drew pictures of it, and so did others in Point Pleasant. This Washington Post reporter is quite confused and curious.

Klein seeks the counsel of man named Alexander Leek. This is

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>