The Mothman Prophecies (film)
Encyclopedia
The Mothman Prophecies is a 2002 psychological horror
Psychological horror
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror fiction that relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot...

 film directed by Mark Pellington
Mark Pellington
-Life and career:Pellington was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He directed The Mothman Prophecies, a 2002 film starring Richard Gere dealing with mysterious deaths foretold by a strange red-eyed flying creature, Mothman, as well as Arlington Road in 1999 starring Tim Robbins and Jeff Bridges....

, based on the 1975 book of the same name
The Mothman Prophecies
The Mothman Prophecies is a 1975 book by author John Keel.The book combines Keel's account of his investigation into alleged sightings of a large, winged creature called Mothman in the vicinity of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, during 1966 and 1967 with his own theories about UFOs and various...

 by parapsychologist
Parapsychology
The term parapsychology was coined in or around 1889 by philosopher Max Dessoir, and originates from para meaning "alongside", and psychology. The term was adopted by J.B. Rhine in the 1930s as a replacement for the term psychical research...

 and Fortean
Charles Fort
Charles Hoy Fort was an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena. Today, the terms Fortean and Forteana are used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort's books sold well and are still in print today.-Biography:Charles Hoy Fort was born in 1874 in Albany, New York, of Dutch...

 author John Keel
John Keel
John Alva Keel, born Alva John Kiehle was an American journalist and influential UFOlogist best known as author of The Mothman Prophecies.-Biography:...

. The screenplay was written by Richard Hatem
Richard Hatem
Richard Hatem is an American television and film screenwriter and producer. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America . He is also a professor on staff with the University of California, Los Angeles , teaching a television writing class.-Early life:Hatem was born in Burbank, California and...

. The film stars Richard Gere
Richard Gere
Richard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol...

 as John Klein, a reporter who researches the legend of the Mothman
Mothman
Mothman is a legendary creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia from 15 November 1966 to 15 December 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register dated 16 November 1966, entitled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something"...

.

The film claims to be based on actual events that occurred between November 1966 and December 1967 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia
Point Pleasant, West Virginia
Point Pleasant is a city in Mason County, West Virginia, United States, at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha rivers. The population was 4,637 at the 2000 census...

. Critical reviews were mixed, but the film was a modest financial success.

Plot

John Klein (Richard Gere
Richard Gere
Richard Tiffany Gere is an American actor. He began acting in the 1970s, playing a supporting role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and a starring role in Days of Heaven. He came to prominence in 1980 for his role in the film American Gigolo, which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol...

) is a hotshot Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 reporter whose life suddenly takes a turn after he and his wife Mary (Debra Messing
Debra Messing
Debra Lynn Messing is an American actress, voice artist, and comedienne. She is perhaps best known for her role as Grace Adler in the NBC sitcom Will & Grace and as Molly Kagan in the mini-series The Starter Wife....

) are involved in a car accident after she apparently tried to avoid something on the road. Although she suffers a non-fatal head injury, Mary's CAT scans show that she has an inoperable brain tumor
Brain tumor
A brain tumor is an intracranial solid neoplasm, a tumor within the brain or the central spinal canal.Brain tumors include all tumors inside the cranium or in the central spinal canal...

 diagnosed as glioblastoma
Glioblastoma multiforme
Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common and most aggressive malignant primary brain tumor in humans, involving glial cells and accounting for 52% of all functional tissue brain tumor cases and 20% of all intracranial tumors. Despite being the most prevalent form of primary brain tumor, GBMs...

. After she dies, John discovers an assortment of cryptic drawings she made of a strange black winged creature she saw on the night of the fateful accident.

Two years later, while driving to Richmond, Virginia
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

, John gets lost and inexplicably finds himself almost five hours off-course, arriving in the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia
Point Pleasant, West Virginia
Point Pleasant is a city in Mason County, West Virginia, United States, at the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha rivers. The population was 4,637 at the 2000 census...

. He soon becomes entangled in the personal stories of residents and in a chain of mysterious events, wherein townspeople report strange supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 encounters, along with weird lights and phone calls. With the help of town sheriff Connie Mills (Laura Linney
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...

), John begins to investigate. He determines that the common link is an apparently supernatural creature known as the Mothman
Mothman
Mothman is a legendary creature reportedly seen in the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia from 15 November 1966 to 15 December 1967. The first newspaper report was published in the Point Pleasant Register dated 16 November 1966, entitled "Couples See Man-Sized Bird...Creature...Something"...

, whose appearances seem to foretell disasters. Things take a decidedly personal and frightening turn when he realizes the eerie connections between his wife’s drawings, eyewitness accounts of the Mothman, and phone calls from an other-worldly, seemingly malevolent entity named Indrid Cold.

The Mothman becomes a personal obsession for Klein. He meets an expert on the subject, Alexander Leek (Alan Bates
Alan Bates
Sir Alan Arthur Bates CBE was an English actor, who came to prominence in the 1960s, a time of high creativity in British cinema, when he demonstrated his versatility in films ranging from the popular children’s story Whistle Down the Wind to the "kitchen sink" drama A Kind of Loving...

), who convinces him that there may be a tragedy in store for the small town.

Filming

The budget was cut by $2,000,000 before filming began. Aside from a few opening scenes filmed in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, the entire movie was filmed in the areas of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

 and Kittanning
Kittanning, Pennsylvania
Kittanning is a borough and the county seat of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania in the United States. It is situated northeast of Pittsburgh, along the east bank of the Allegheny River. The name means "at the great stream" in the Delaware language...

 in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

. The scenes of Gere sitting on a park bench are on the University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...

 campus. Road montages were filmed on Pennsylvania Route 28
Pennsylvania Route 28
Pennsylvania Route 28 is a major state highway which runs for 97 miles from Interstate 279 and Interstate 579 at the Interstate 279 Interchange in Pittsburgh to U.S. Route 219 in Brockway in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. The expressway from Kittanning to Pittsburgh is called the Alexander H...

, and the Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 scenes are completely shot in downtown Pittsburgh’s Mellon Square
Mellon Square
Mellon Square is an urban park in Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the first Modernist park built above a parking garage. With its distinctive black-and-white geometric pavement, it is a prominent feature and gathering spot of Downtown Pittsburgh....

 and Trinity Churchyard environs as well as the entrance to the Duquesne Club. The "Chemical Plant" featured in the movie is actually a power station owned by Reliant Energy in Elrama, Pennsylvania. Point Pleasant scenes were shot in Kittanning, Pennsylvania
Kittanning, Pennsylvania
Kittanning is a borough and the county seat of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania in the United States. It is situated northeast of Pittsburgh, along the east bank of the Allegheny River. The name means "at the great stream" in the Delaware language...

. The collapse of the Silver Bridge
Silver Bridge
The Silver Bridge collapsed in 1967, killing 46 people. The terms Silver Bridge or Silverbridge may also refer to:* Silver Memorial Bridge, the replacement for the above bridge, opened in 1969....

 was actually filmed at the Kittanning Citizens Bridge
Kittanning Citizens Bridge
The Kittanning Citizens Bridge is a through truss bridge spanning the Allegheny River at Kittanning in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Constructed in 1932, the bridge carries vehicles and pedestrians between Kittanning and West Kittanning. The bridge was used as a backdrop, and climax scene in...

 in downtown Kittanning. Scenes shot at Gordon Smallwood’s house were filmed in Washington County on Pennsylvania Route 917. Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County Airport
Allegheny County Airport
Allegheny County Airport is located in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, four miles southeast of the city of Pittsburgh. It is the fifth busiest airport in Pennsylvania following Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, and Harrisburg...

 serves as backdrop for the airfield scenes. Despite this relocation, several police officers from Point Pleasant appeared as extras.

Music

Several artists contributed music to the venture. A remix single of "Halflight" by the band, Low
Low (band)
Low is an American indie rock group from Duluth, Minnesota, formed in 1993. As of 2010, the group is composed of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker , both founding members, and Steve Garrington ....

, was featured in the movie.

Reception

The Mothman Prophecies received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

 reports 52% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based on 135 reviews, with a rating of 5.5/10. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

 of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

gave it two stars out of four, calling it "unfocused" and "meandering," but praised the direction by Mark Pellington "whose command of camera, pacing and the overall effect is so good, it deserves a better screenplay."

Differences from the book

The film adaptation of The Mothman Prophecies concentrates more on the personal stories and personalities of the characters and less on the investigation of UFOs and other strange phenomena upon which much of the book is based. Also, it is set in the modern day rather than in the 1960s, when the alleged sightings of the Mothman entity occurred.

The majority of the characters are also re-imagined. All have been renamed and in some cases, several characters have been merged into one or altered in some other way. Several have been removed entirely, such as the newspaper editor Mary Hyre, although her death somewhat mirrors one of the characters in the movie. The Men in Black
Men in Black
Men in Black , in American popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who claim to be government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves...

, or “MIBs,” in the book are removed; Indrid Cold, a relatively benign being in the book, is something more sinister in the film; and the Mothman itself rarely appears in the film. Instead, it is used to evoke subtle notes of supernatural horror for the filmgoer, versus functioning as the central, mysterious and provocative character as in the book.

In reality, 46 people died in the collapse of the Silver Bridge
Silver Bridge
The Silver Bridge collapsed in 1967, killing 46 people. The terms Silver Bridge or Silverbridge may also refer to:* Silver Memorial Bridge, the replacement for the above bridge, opened in 1969....

, not 36. Also, the film's claim at the end credits of the collapse of the Silver Bridge never being explained is incorrect, the incident was found to be caused by the failure of an eye-bar
Eyebar
In structural engineering and construction, an eyebar is a straight bar, usually of metal, with a hole at each end for fixing to other components...

in a suspension chain.

Home media

Mothman Prophecies was released on DVD on June 2002, with a two-disc Special Edition DVD set released later, in May 2003.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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