13 Nights of Hallowe'en 2009: Night #12 The Crow

The night before Hallowe'en is infamously known as Devil's Night and is a time of trouble ranging from the annoying to the destructive to the violent. In some places, like Detroit, Devil's Night was known for its record number of arson cases. The Crow is one of the few movies about the night, which is somewhat understandable with Hallowe'en being a much juicier target. The Crow isn't necessarily a horror movie even though it is in the vein. It's more of a dark action movie. It is also one of those rare movies where the star met with an untimely death on the set with the accident that took Brandon Lee's life. The filmmakers turned the movie into something of an homage to this young talent. They also did an excellent job of completing the film in his absence.

When I first saw The Crow at the theatre I was left with two impressions. The first was that this was a very special movie. The second, during the viewing, was that it pulled in a lot of ideas from different places and had that feeling of reusing bits of others films. What is odd about this second impression is that it very quickly faded. Whatever movies I felt The Crow borrowed from were quickly subsumed by the movie and I quickly could not recall any of them, those elements, themes, and scenes now belong to The Crow. Put together with the rest of the movie they no longer belong to the original sources in any kind of important way, as odd as that sounds. As for The Crow's original graphic novels I only know what I've heard in the DVD extras plus a little from additional bits in the TV series.

Mood: mellow.

Music: Dead Souls by Nine Inch Nails off of The Crow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

13 Nights of Hallowe'en: Night #5 The Messengers

Tonight we have a movie that isn’t going to immediately
find comparison to something else based on just the title or a trailer. The movie is “The Messengers” directed by the Pang brothers. Oxide and Danny Pang are Hong Kong film creators responsible for the original “The Eye” and two sequels--a new one is schedules under someone else. Despite that, this movie does not appear to be a remake of any Hong Kong or other Asian film for that matter. This is immediately a good thing since that particular kind of remake is generally not more than just an alternate version, and subbed versions of the original are the preference amongst the English-speaking fans of the original films. This is also a good thing because it means it is the first run at the movie’s concept.

“The Messengers” is a haunted house story. The first thing anyone needs to know is in the lengthy movie tagline itself, “There is evidence to suggest that children are highly susceptible to paranormal phenomena. They see what adults cannot. ...” This idea is a common parapsychological tenet, though it does get a little lost in the movie, causing unnecessary confusion among some viewers as evinced by their comments about the film. The Solomon siblings are aware that their new house is haunted, but of course for their parents to understand this fact things will have to get pretty wild and crazy. One of the working titles for the film was “Scarecrow”, which explains some things. The crows are indicative of more than meets eye to anyone who knows what a psychopomp is.

Mood: relieved.
Music: Haunted by Evanescence of of Fallen.