THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES
I spent the late 90s to the early 2000s working on a very important task: memorizing information also available on IMDB. The amount of brain space that could have been used to develop a workable personality was instead spent on remembering the names of dudes who directed a couple of okay films during that time period.
The three names that pop into my head when I think of useless movie knowledge that I somehow retain – are Jonathan Mostow, David Twohy and director of The Mothman Prophecies, Mark Pellington. They all made a pretty effective low budget thriller in the late 90s that they followed up with also rock solid and slightly bigger budgeted thriller in the early 00s. Mostow’s Breakdownand U-571, Twohy’s The Arrival and Pitch Black and Pellington’s Arlington Road and The Mothman Prophecies.
Why do you need to know this information? You don’t. Nobody does. I have it in my head and I need to put it somewhere. Why did I think these three whose later credits are not worth looking up would be the names that I would need to sear into my brain? I’ll never know. I spent my late teens/early twenties never properly understanding that in order to hold a conversation you should ask people questions and be interested in the answer, but I could easily list off the supporting cast members of these movies nobody really remembers.
The Mothman Prophecies is based on “real events” that happened in the 60s in Point Pleasant, West Virginia where a huge, flying, black figure with red eyes started appearing alongside a spate of creepy phone calls where a voice would throw out random numbers and eerie messages. In the film Richard Gere starts to investigate these goings on. What do the messages mean? Is it a warning? A premonition? I’m an absolute sucker for this sort of nonsense and I have a soft spot for The Mothman Prophecies even though the whole film is like the offcuts of an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Where would I fit into The Mothman Prophecies? Well, I could find myself in the town of Point Pleasant without knowing why. And I too, might start receiving mysterious messages from some kind of weird voice. No reason for these messages to be delivered exclusively to Richard Gere. I would be just as capable of receiving dire warnings as anybody else.
IF I WERE IN 'THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES' I WOULD: DIE THE WORST POSSIBLE DEATH - ON A STAGE TO A SMALL CROWD AT A SHOW THAT STOPPED RUNNING IN 2018, ACCORDING TO ITS FACEBOOK PAGE
