The Messenger (2015)

Thanks for the memories!

hyped garbage

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

I found nothing enjoyable in this movie. You are basically witnessing the pain of a young man who is a clairvoyant. He sees and hears the dead. He is desperately trying to escape from them and people think he is mentally ill as he stands shouting at nothing. People treat him badly, even his family. It's not a horror movie, it's a drama really.

I see dead people has been done before, and better. In this case we're drawn into the life of someone who has seen dead people for a long time. Instead of taking advantage of what would be an awesome ability, he wallows in self-pity, self-destruction, and stupid common sense mistakes (don't talk to dead peoples' families AT the funeral!).The problem with this movie isn't the subject matter, or the ability to see dead people and want to complete a "mission" and speak to those still living on behalf of the dead person. The problem is that you never feel anything for the protagonist. He has completely abdicated any sense that his gift is beneficial; to him it is only an anchor weighing him down from doing....what? Night retail work at the local Tesco? Since you never feel any sympathy for the main character despite many flashbacks and inferences that he deserves our understanding and compassion, you never feel like he has been given anything less than a gift that he refuses to take advantage of. And the movie becomes frustrating throughout because of it. Frustrating, then annoying. You want to scream at the screen, just tell them something only a dead person would know about the circumstances, stop coming off like a stalker creep, oh and by the way brush your teeth, take a shower, and change your clothes.A moment of validation wasted is when he is talking with his nephew and he finds they share a bond; finally, he knows he is not crazy. Easily that serves as a time when both could find solace in one another, provide strength, support...but no.Strong acting by Sheehan can't save this rubbish heep from just wishing the movie would fast forward to something more substantial instead of the petty sobbing of a man who has been given an extraordinary gift and chooses to waste it.

Jack is a troubled adult, who's had a troubled life. In fact, everything about him is troubled, and trouble.After a major life event affected him as a child, he has since had the ability to be pestered by troubled souls, dead people, and because of this he is stamped as a mental health problem (but talking to souls in a pub looking very dishevelled and unkempt doesn't help).After a journalist is found dead, and it looking like suicide, Jack is hounded by the soul, because something wasn't quite right about his death, and he's trying to get a message to his loved one......hence the title.....If you take Randall & Hopkirk (deceased), then add elements of The Sixth Sense and Ghost, you get this quite gritty, suburban Gothic horror.Sheehan excels as our protagonist, not doing his character any favours by playing Jack as a very dis-likable person, but because of his back-story, you can forgive his shortcomings, as the narrative depicts his childhood to be less than pleasurable.The film focuses on grieving, forgiveness and guilt, as the immediate characters to Jack perceive his 'gift' as a result of his fathers death, and how the family unit changed when he and his sister became fatherless.It's a shame that the gift stemmed from sudden loss, because this just seems like a cheap excuse from the makers to make him seem like a 'weirdo' to others, and the on,y one who believes him is involved in a minor sub-plot that becomes a major twist come the end.It's not a bad film by any means, it's just disjointed and doesn't know what to do with all the sub-plots going on, and in turn, it never really wraps itself up for a satisfactory conclusion.But the cast are great, the cinematography is wonderfully bleak and cold, but I fear many will miss the grieving/loss/guilt element of the narrative and see it as a straight up horror.Worth watching though.

I have been a fan of Robert Sheehan ever since I first saw him on Misfits almost 6 years ago, so when I saw that he was in another movie more recently, of course I went out of my way to find it online as it had not been promoted anywhere in the United States. Upon reading the summary, I did not know what to expect as it seemed to be just another "I can talk to ghosts but no one else can see them" type of movie. But the more you get into it, you begin to realize that it is not just that.I will admit that there were parts that I did not fully understand at first. As a whole this movie is a lot to take in and even having watched it in full with no distractions I felt as if I missed something, or maybe that there was something in the plot that was missing. I find myself having so many questions, but no proper way to word them. The plot is very scattered, which may lead to confusion, and I thought that it was going to tie together in the end but come to find out that the ending just left me with even more confusion. It is shown earlier in the movie that Emma's son has this "sight" as well, but with her finding the article about the swimming pool at the very end and then cutting to a shot of Ben standing with the drowned boy, it left me wondering what exactly it meant. She had no knowledge of her son seeing the dead boy, and Jack had never mentioned it either, so how did this ending tie into the movie plot whatsoever?This was not the only time where I was left confused at why certain things were written into the script. As a whole it was difficult to understand what exactly point that the writer was trying to make and why this story was being told. Nothing was resolved in the end, and no one (except maybe Emma) believed the Jack was telling the truth. He was left in the hospital despite having proved (by saving Sarah's life) that he had some type of ability, whether they understood it to be him speaking to the dead or not.I would not say that this is a awful movie as it did have its strong points; great acting, well put together scenes, beautiful shots and camera work for the most part, but as I stated above it left something to be desired and a feeling that something was missed.