Based on the real life occurrence of the collapse of the Silver Point bridge in Ohio in mid-December 1967, this supernatural thriller amplifies contemporary local press reports of the time of the supposed appearance of a demonic creature known as the Mothman which acted as a harbinger of disaster.
The movie however is set in the present day and focuses on Richard Gere's Washington Post journalist who at the beginning loses his wife following a car accident when she was driving their car and was distracted by a vision of the Mothman, a blurry, black outline of a winged creature which suddenly appeared in front of her. Gere's character, who was a passenger in the car at the time, tries to move on with his life but two years later at around Christmas time, takes a moonlight drive when he too experiences something other-worldly as he inexplicably ends up in the small country town of Pleasant Point with no knowledge of how he got there.
At dead of night, he encounters a local man who swears it's his third visit to him in a row, which requires the intervention of local cop Laura Linney, who mentions to him that lately a lot of strange things have been happening in the neighborhood. Sure enough the same local man comes to Gere with takes of nightmarish visions which apparently translate into major disasters elsewhere in the world, plus Gere and Linney themselves appear to have similar experiences of their own. Sure enough, it all converges in the disaster at the bridge involving the two in a dramatic episode to confound the apparent prophecy as it affects even one life out of many.
The movie is certainly moody and atmospheric, using a grim grey pallette and an apposite electronic music soundtrack to create an undefined air of foreboding throughout. We never get a clear picture of the Mothman itself, which instead only appears in a blurrily distorted, edge-of-imagination way but elsewhere a number of jolting shocks are inserted to keep viewers on edge throughout.
I was content to be take on Gere's convoluted journey but wasn't entirely convinced by the end that all the dots in the occasionally confusing narrative had been properly joined up. The pacing too I found somewhat slow and I found the climax to be somewhat underwhelming. Gere and Linney nevertheless do a good job of walking us through this particular series of unfortunate events but by the end, intriguing as it all was, I felt it could have been made into a still more compelling feature to really draw me towards the edge of my seat.
The movie however is set in the present day and focuses on Richard Gere's Washington Post journalist who at the beginning loses his wife following a car accident when she was driving their car and was distracted by a vision of the Mothman, a blurry, black outline of a winged creature which suddenly appeared in front of her. Gere's character, who was a passenger in the car at the time, tries to move on with his life but two years later at around Christmas time, takes a moonlight drive when he too experiences something other-worldly as he inexplicably ends up in the small country town of Pleasant Point with no knowledge of how he got there.
At dead of night, he encounters a local man who swears it's his third visit to him in a row, which requires the intervention of local cop Laura Linney, who mentions to him that lately a lot of strange things have been happening in the neighborhood. Sure enough the same local man comes to Gere with takes of nightmarish visions which apparently translate into major disasters elsewhere in the world, plus Gere and Linney themselves appear to have similar experiences of their own. Sure enough, it all converges in the disaster at the bridge involving the two in a dramatic episode to confound the apparent prophecy as it affects even one life out of many.
The movie is certainly moody and atmospheric, using a grim grey pallette and an apposite electronic music soundtrack to create an undefined air of foreboding throughout. We never get a clear picture of the Mothman itself, which instead only appears in a blurrily distorted, edge-of-imagination way but elsewhere a number of jolting shocks are inserted to keep viewers on edge throughout.
I was content to be take on Gere's convoluted journey but wasn't entirely convinced by the end that all the dots in the occasionally confusing narrative had been properly joined up. The pacing too I found somewhat slow and I found the climax to be somewhat underwhelming. Gere and Linney nevertheless do a good job of walking us through this particular series of unfortunate events but by the end, intriguing as it all was, I felt it could have been made into a still more compelling feature to really draw me towards the edge of my seat.