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Clarence Tsui

Starring: Kristen Stewart,  Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller

Directors: Danny Pang Chun  and  Oxide Pang Fat

Category: IIB

A sense of deja-vu permeates The Messengers, Danny and Oxide Pang's  first  Hollywood movie.

Cinema-goers  warmed to  American remakes of The Grudge,  produced by  Sam Raimi, and  The Messengers is  another haunted-house horror show,   with elements from  classics such as  The Sixth Sense (the child who sees ghosts)  and The Birds (croaking crows  herald death and destruction).

But it takes more than an unoriginal script to sink the Pang brothers.

Although hardly at their best,  they  manage to imbue the film with  dark suspense,  creepiness and  heart-stopping fright - the stuff  with which they've made their names since The Eye.

The Pangs  make good use of  the landscape, as the Solomon family leaves a troubled past in Chicago for a new life on the vast plains of North Dakota.  Fields of bright sunflowers are contrasted with  creaky interiors,   providing a respite for the faint-hearted  as  the horror begins.

At first, teenage daughter Jess (Kristen Stewart) - an urbanite  unhappy about   finding herself in the seclusion of the Midwest - complains about hearing and seeing things.  Her sanity rapidly unravels  as the film heads to a  climax of murderous mayhem. The Pangs  fuel the tension by keeping  horrors out of sight - but not out  of mind - and confusing  spectres with  Jess'  psychosis.

The further The Messengers  heads towards its conventional conclusion, the more banal  it gets - which is a pity, given the massive potential.  In the end, the Pangs' brilliance is fenced in by the film's  creative confines, although it's probably scary enough for most.

The Messengers opens today



The Messengers