Mothman (2010)

Excellent but underrated film

Best movie ever!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Jewel Staite gives one of her finest performances in this exciting horror film from visionary director Sheldon Wilson. With an intelligent and insightful script by gifted screenwriters Sonny Lee and Patrick Walsh, Mothman brings a fresh and creative energy to the notorious legend. Amazing special effects highlight the film and Wilson uses the skillful depiction of the red-eyed creature spectacularly. The dialog is smart and clever and the characterizations have depth and humanity. It is refreshing in a horror film to see people behaving like human beings rather than cardboard cutouts simply running for their lives and screaming. Overall, this is an extraordinary motion picture of unusual power that succeeds beautifully as a horror film and brilliantly as a study of individual courage in crisis.

I admit that I do dislike most of the movies airing on the SyFy channel, but I watch them out of curiosity to get novelty value or to see if either of them are actually surprisingly watchable when there is nothing or little else on. Mothman as I've said is not SyFy's worst by a long shot, but it is not very good, as a matter of fact it is rather weak.The acting is better than anticipated though none are particularly great, but they are undermined by stock and stereotypical characters, a very rushed and underdeveloped story, a laughable script and when they seemingly realised that they only had twenty minutes left and had not finished telling the story the writers decided to include a twist. Unfortunately this twist is utterly moronic leading to one of the weakest endings I've seen in a while.In conclusion, not the worst but weak. 2/10 Bethany Cox

SyFy comes up with another monster movie, and what is it like? Well, in Jewel Staite it has a leading lady who has a small but passionate following from her career so far, some acting ability, and an engaging screen presence (it also has no-one else you have ever heard of or are ever going to hear of again).It has a CGI monster which is, surprisingly, a good deal less awful than you were expecting. And, when I say "you", I mean "I", of course. SyFy's record with CGI critters is not good, but many have been a great deal worse than this one.Where it falls down badly, though, is in the screenplay, which is poor. A good script can help a low budget movie overcome its lack of budget: a bad script means that a film stinks no matter how much money you throw at the production.Which is a pity, because this film could have been much better.

Mothman starts out... essentially it's like another one of those ridiculously common ghost movies. Characters become targeted, some die mysteriously and survivors must discover how to survive.The monster itself tends to emerge from whatever reflective surfaces are available to murder victims.The protagonist is visiting and reporting on the town. Killing her first wouldn't raise any suspicions so naturally the monster goes around killing the permanent citizens first.But things reach their lowest when the monster starts rampaging, ignoring the previously-established rules completely. This scene doesn't make sense in the context of the previous events and is likely caused by a rewrite. Another problem is the main cast; many were murdered without making any impression.