The Messengers (2007) – Film Summary and Review

The Messengers is a horror film about a family that moves house and has to contend with supernatural events.

Roy Solomon’s big dream is to be a sunflower farmer. And why the hell not? Dreams are good. Everyone needs a dream. Roy decides to make his dream a reality and moves his family out to one of the most old and rundown farmhouses imaginable. The dream turns into a nightmare for his daughter Jess when strange entities start to manifest themselves in and around the house.

To make matters worse only Jess and her little brother, Ben, can see these rather scary-looking house guests. Ben sees them before his sister but is unable to talk and so cannot back up his her claims when she tries to tell her doubting parents that all in not well in the old homestead.

All Ben can do is point his little pinkies at the apparitions but, if there’s a problem, Mom and Pop just can’t seem to see it. Perhaps they are just too busy. Dad has his sunflower seeds to plant and has an ongoing battle with the flocks of rather aggressive crows that are always hanging around the farm. His wife, Denise, has problems of her own. There is a stain on the bedroom wall. She keeps on washing it off and it keeps coming back (don’t you just hate it when that happens?)

I enjoyed watching The Messengers, but I never really figured out the significance of the crows. I must also admit that, at one point in the film, I jumped in my seat. That’s an unusual thing for me but one of the scenes succeeded in taking me by surprise.

The special effects in The Messengers are good, the storyline is okay, and the film has a decent ending. These days, many films leave me feeling let down at the end. I was expecting The Messengers would do the same. I’m glad that I got that wrong.

If you decide to watch The Messengers keep an eye open for William B. Davis (the Cancer Man from The X-Files). He turns up a couple of times, early on in the film, as an estate agent who has a client who wants to buy the Solomons’ new home from them for considerably more than they paid for it. Of course, that’s not going to happen. Pop Solomon has a dream and he intends to follow it all the way to harvest.