Fantastic climax, but ....

I don’t get to follow the television series The X-Files religiously. But every time I catch an episode that really interests me, I sit down and finish it to the very end.

However, if it is a really boring episode that’s being aired on TV, then I sing praises to the world of technology for the invention of the remote control, switch channels and kiss goodbye to that week’s episode of The X-Files.

Unfortunately, the same thing can’t be done inside a movie theater. No, not even if we bring with us a really huge remote control. We’re stuck there for the good and bad part of the film. And if it’s a really bad film, then we just have to grin and bear it – unless you want to walk out and say goodbye to the P50 you paid for your ticket.

When I went to see The Mothman Prophecies last week, I conditioned myself to really like the film (which I guess is the attitude of anyone watching a movie).

The Mothman Prophecies, I found out, is an adaptation of a book written in 1975 by John Keel who supposedly knows everything there is to know about UFOs.

The book and the film talk about the mothman, a huge winged creature (about seven feet in height) that is said to show itself at a particular site before disaster strikes. It supposedly showed itself in Moscow before the Chernobyl accident. Then, also in Mexico before the great quake.

The Mothman Prophecies dramatizes the events leading to the collapse of a bridge on the Ohio River. In the film, the hero (as played by Richard Gere), is a hotshot political writer for The Washington Post. He is happily married to his wife (Debra Messing) and, in fact, had just come from a house-hunting expedition when tragedy strikes. Behind the wheel, his wife sees a grotesque winged figure in the horizon and, out of fear, loses control of the car – until the vehicle rolls many times over off the road. Although they both survive the accident, the doctors at the hospital later detect a tumor in her brain (no, it wasn’t a result of the car crash) and she dies not long after. At the side table of her hospital bed after her death, Gere finds several sheets of paper with drawings of winged creatures on it. (He initially mistook them for angels).

After two years, more mysterious circumstances unfold. One late evening, he is driving in Virginia when his car suddenly breaks down (the car mechanic who later checks it finds nothing wrong with his vehicle. When he knocks on the door of one of the houses in the neighborhood, he is mistaken for a regular menace by its annoyed owner (Will Patton), who eventually summons the police (Laura Linney).

Of course, he is released – especially after he is recognized as a prominent figure. But there’s still something baffling about the whole thing. How on earth did he find himself in a town (called Point Pleasant) almost two states away from where he originally intended to go? These are just some of the mysteries depicted in The Mothman Prophecies.

As a sci-fi thriller, the movie succeeds in creating a really eerie atmosphere all throughout the film. (Never mind the fact that its very few visual effects are amateurishly done.)

The problem of The Mothman Prophecies is its long exposition. It’s soooo long that the shirt I wore to the movie theater almost started to smell of mothballs. Needless to say, a great part of it is boring.

Mercifully, just when most viewers are tempted to walk out of the film, they are rewarded with a really fantastic climax that you only see in really big budget Hollywood movies. If only for this sequence, I felt good for having stayed and finished the film. For the rest of the film, however, you can probably just sleep through it and have your companion tell you the story later over Coke and burgers.

Richard Gere – I have to say though - is outstanding in this movie. Despite the ridiculousness of the plot, you somehow still take the whole thing seriously because of his very convincing performance in the movie.

But as for the movie, it would have made a great X-Files episode on television, but certainly not a full-length film.