I did do a search for “mothman” but nothing came up, so apologies if there were threads on this lost in the purge. I don’t know when it came out in the US, it only just came out here.
Anyway it terrified me. And fascinated me. I could barely sleep afterwards, and I kept thinking the silhouette of my towel hanging over my cupboard door by the window was Indrid Cole.
Just wanted to hear other people’s opinions/criticisms of this film. Plus any more stuff anyone knows on the original ULs that spawned it.
If you can find them, read the last two issues of the magazine Skeptical Inquirer for the rationalist take on the movie, and on the John Keel book that inspired it. (Check out the website of the Comittee for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal at www.csicop.org , too)
IMHO, neither was the movie.
I’ll admit, it was a nicely dark movie, but AFAICT, all I have to be afraid of are supernatural beings that will tell me what’s going to happen in the future. Terrifying in a “knowing the future is terrible” kind of way, but not much else. All in all, I’ve seen episodes of The X-Files that had more punch.
Sorry, nothing personal, but you did ask for other people’s opinions.
I tried to read the book, but couldn’t get more than 1/4 of the way through it…I was intrigued by the movie trailers and wanted to read the book before I saw the movie (backwards, I know).
Since I couldn’t read the book, I DEFINITELY wasn’t going to pay $8.00 to see the movie…maybe I’m wrong though. Who saw the movie and actually LIKED it??
Funny you should mention it, I just watched it the other night. I hadn’t read the book, but I read Robert Anton Wilson’s take on the whole thing in Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati — he pretty well summarized Keel’s book. I also learned more details of the original, true, Mothman story from a cool web site “The Mystery of the Mothman…” which unfortunately no longer exists.
I remember when the Silver Bridge collapsed when I was a young kid in Ohio and it was all over the news. But I didn’t learn of the Mothman connection until I read Cosmic Trigger. Creepy as hell!
I thought the movie was overly fictionalized and romanticized, and had practically no Mothman at all! That was a big disappointment! Instead of being about Mothman and real people, it was entirely about Richard Gere and his personal hangups. (Yes, Richard, it’s always about you, isn’t it?)
Wasn’t there supposed to be another Mothman movie? How do we get to see it? No distribution, I guess.
I didn’t like the way the story was removed from the 1960s to the present, and so many details of the original facts were changed (like placing the bridge collapse on Christmas Eve, instead of December 15, just to make it slightly more romantic). Since the true story had been so drastically altered for this movie, I’m not sure what was even the point of making this movie at all.
Note how the occult researcher’s name was “Leek” — hey, that’s Keel spelled backwards! You can’t fool me, I caught that one right off!
Well, it may or may not have been faithful to the book (which I didn’t read), and I certainly don’t believe that the film has much if anything to do with “real events,” but taken just as an entertaining spookshow, MOTHMAN is not bad – creepy, moody, and suggestive. It didn’t give me nightmares, and I’m not going to run out and see it again or buy the DVD, but it held my interest for two hours and generated a fair share of shudders.