cricketbat The Messengers is fairly ridiculous. The characters, plot and "twists" all seem familiar because we've seen them before a dozen times. The movie relies solely on sudden noises and movements to scare the audience. Even the ghosts are not much more than blurry, bad CGI. Not really worth watching.

GL84 Moving to the countryside for a fresh start, a ten helps her parents discover their new home is haunted by a series of ghosts and tries to help them before taking their newborn brother.Overall, this is certainly quite a decent if slight troubling effort. Perhaps the best element at play here is the fact that there's some genuinely creepy and chilling moments from the ghosts throughout this. There's several attack here which are downright creepy, including the main one which opens the film because it all happens in front of the kid, but moreso later efforts like the attack in the basement when she's supposedly babysitting the brother where the approaching ghost flips around furniture to the point of a haunted house movie as well as a secondary scene in the house when she's all along are lengthy, involved scenes that are incredibly chilling. They manage to work around the rather cliché notions of the child being the only one capable of noticing such activities until it's too late so this one can make a rather enjoyable finale when it finally throws it back to them with the wonderfully fun and enjoyable finale that makes for a great time. That said, there are still quite a few flaws here as this one tends to feature so many scenes that just don't mean anything. The first half to this features the rather lousy subplot about her troubled past coming into play which are just part of the problems that this section has as this doesn't really do anything really special with this storyline and really causes this one to seem quite bland and repetitive focusing on such insignificant places without anything worthwhile. Alongside this incessantly lame plot line is an overuse of the family adjusting to farm- life and being out in the wilderness, so what happens here is just insanely boring and not really doing much of anything. Setting up the plants, learning the equipment and it's functions and greeting the locals really isn't all that interesting as these just get dragged out endlessly to make the attacks all the more child-like by taking out all the violence and intensity that would normally be found here so this one contains a lot of boring, useless scenes that set-up quite a tame, direction-less style that that hurts more than helps it.Rated PG-13: Mild Violence, Language and children-in-danger.

MattyGibbs Films about the supernatural are not my favourite genre of horror as they are usually extremely predictable and bland. This however for me is one of the better efforts of recent years. It's extremely well filmed and the acting was of a good standard especially from the much maligned Kristen Stewart who was excellent in this. Whilst the plot is nothing ground breaking the setting is beautiful and suitably isolated which creates a real air of tension. There are a few jump out of your seat moments but this film doesn't just rely on cheap shocks as it also tries to combine some elements of credible drama about family breakdowns. The editing is crisp so it all moves along at a pleasing pace which means you don't have time to get bored. I enjoyed this film far more than I expected given the rating of 5.3 and think it has an unfairly low rating on here. Don't expect a classic or much gore but just enjoy a well made supernatural horror.

Toronto85 Desperate for a new beginning to their lives, the Soloman family move to a deserted area in North Dakota. The farmhouse that they move into holds some deadly secrets. The family who used to live there mysteriously disappeared one day five years prior. Sixteen year old Jess and her three year old brother begin to see things around the house, ghastly things. Unfortunately for Jess, her parents won't believe her. There is an interesting twist to it all as we discover who or what killed the family years ago. Will Jess and her family survive supernatural threats as well as human?The Messengers gives us two genre's in one. We see Jess deal with the forces from beyond the grave (the ghosts on the Rollins family who died there) as well as the one responsible for murdering the family five years prior. So it feels a lot like Amityville Horror meets Halloween. Unfortunately, The Messengers doesn't provide many scares at all. There are some creepy moments with the "ghosts" creeping up around the family, but nothing overly frightening. The identity of who killed the family was not shocking, it's pretty easy to guess it early on. Acting was good enough from Kristen Stewart (pre-Twilight days) and Penelope Ann Miller.The plot of 'The Messengers' sounds good enough, but at the core of it all is just an average horror movie. It's not very scary, there isn't much (if any) gore, and it doesn't succeed in keeping my interest for long. It felt like a PG-13 movie, which is what it was. I'm going to have to watch the sequel they made, which apparently is a prequel to this one. Hopefully it will be better.5/10