The Messengers
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- For the TLC series of the same name, see The Messengers (TV series).
| The Messengers | |
|---|---|
 Promotional movie poster for the film |
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| Directed by | Oxide Pang Danny Pang |
| Produced by | Lou Arkoff Joseph Drake Nathan Kahan Jim Miller |
| Written by | Stuart Beattie Todd Farmer Mark Wheaton |
| Starring | Kristen Stewart Dylan McDermott Penelope Ann Miller and John Corbett |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Entertainment |
| Release date(s) | February 2, 2007 |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $16 million |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Messengers is a 2007 supernatural thriller film directed by the Pang Brothers and produced by Sam Raimi. It stars Kristen Stewart, Graham Bell, John Corbett, William B. Davis, Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller. The plot of the film is about an ominous darkness that invades a seemingly serene sunflower farm in North Dakota, and the Solomon family is torn apart by suspicion, mayhem, and murder. The film was released on February 2. Although the setting of the film is in North Dakota, filming actually took place in the Qu'Appelle Valley near the small community of Abernethy, Saskatchewan. The graphic novel adaptation will be published in January 2007 by Dark Horse Comics, written by Jason Hall and illustrated by Kelley Jones.
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[edit] Plot
At the movie's beginning, a frightened woman is with her son, telling him that he has to be strong and that everything is going to be okay. She hears something coming towards the door and makes her son hide under the bed. The door bursts open and something throws the woman against the wall. The son, terrified, runs out of the room and into his sister, who is also scared. She grabs him and runs down the stairs. The boy hides under a table, but his sister is caught and dragged away, down into the cellar. The boy runs into the kitchen and hides in a cabinet, but he is soon found and killed as well.
Five years later, a new family is moving into the house from the city, hoping to start a sunflower farm. The main character, Jess Solomon, is angry about having to move away from her friends. She once got into a car accident with her toddler brother because she was drunk, and he became a mute. Her brother, Ben, sees things the others cannot see...the past owners of the house. Jess' father, Roy, hires a man named John Burwell to work on his sunflower farm for him. The house always seems to have crows flying around it; some crows even attack Roy. Jess has an encounter with one of the ghosts, the mother, in the closet. She calls 911 and the authorities come, only to find a terrified Jess. They dismiss it as a false alarm, and Jess is in disbelief. She later finds out more details about the Rollins family that lived in the house and suddenly left, and sees a picture of them, with John in it. As it turns out, the man who killed the past owners of the house in a fit of madness is actually John, who was the head of the Rollins family, and now attacks Jess and her family. John's turn to insanity is caused by crows attacking him, representing the family's avengers. John calls Jess' mother, Denise, "Mary" and Ben "Michael," finally attacking Jess and Roy. John is absorbed into the cellar floor as the spirits grab him and pull him in.
[edit] Box Office
The Messengers placed first in box office receipts for the weekend of February 2-4, 2007. In its first weekend of release the film grossed $14,500,000. [1]
[edit] Promotion
To promote The Messengers, Sony Pictures has included in its dossier of digital-marketing tools a ringtone only young consumers can hear.
"Ultrasonic ringtones -- ringtones that are audible to teenagers but not adults -- are a featured aspect of the film's promotional campaign, which is geared toward a teen audience and inspired by the movie's story line about a young female protagonist insisting she hears voices that her parents cannot hear." [2]
Also, AIM has advertised the movie, by making a screen name for the main character Jess that is Jess2Feb07, that ties in with the movie release date. AIM users can add her to their buddy list and IM her, then she will give them her phone number to talk to with them while she goes to the basement to check it for noises.
The Phone number is: 1800-899-9619
[edit] External links
- Official site of The Messengers
- The Messengers at the Internet Movie Database
- The Messengers at UpcomingHorrorMovies.com
- The Messengers at CountingDown.com
- The Messengers at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Messengers at BeenToTheMovies.com (Review)
