Thursday, February 08, 2007
Number 1 movie in US opens in RP
CAN children see what adults do not? There is evidence to suggest that children are highly susceptible to paranormal phenomenon. But will you believe in what they tell you?
In the exciting thriller "The Messengers", two parents will be forced to see what they could not. The Solomon family has left the fast paced life of Chicago for the secluded world of a North Dakota farm. Amidst the tranquil sway of the farm's field of sunflowers, Jess (Kristen Stewart) soon realizes how terrifying seclusion can be when she and her three-year-old brother Ben begin seeing ominous apparitions invisible to everyone else.
When those specters become violent, Jess' sanity is questioned, a double jeopardy for the tormented teen. Her troublesome past comes face to face with the past of those who once lived in the house, a perilous confrontation that leaves her believability in question with those she desperately tries to warn before it is too late.
Directors Danny Pang and Oxide Pang have turned the ghost genre inside out with "The Messengers", their first American feature film and English language debut. It was their real life brush with the paranormal that influenced their enhancement of the story from page to screen.
Fans of their previous work got a hint of that experience in the movie "The Eye". "It is the escalator scene. One time I saw this guy and he just walked into the escalator," recalls Pang. "I followed him and when I walked in, there was no one there. I was living on the 12th floor. From the 12th floor to the ground it was about 30 seconds. In my mind it was about an hour because I was really scared inside those 30 seconds," Pang added.
For his identical twin and the film's co-director Oxide, "it was around one o'clock in the afternoon. I saw the shadow of a person walking but it was only the shadow. I can see the shadow but no person and it wasn't only me. I saw it for about a minute walking on the road and then I asked my friend, `can you see that?' And he could. So the time was really long." Those experiences "gave us a concept."
The end result was essentially "a unique ghost story from the Pangs' point of view," says producer Jason Shuman. "I have been a huge fan of the Pangs for years...they came and added what I like to call Pang vision, their sense of style, horror and way of creating tension that's completely distinctive.
The co-directors were likewise thrilled at the prospect of working on a Hollywood film, particularly with "The Grudge" producer and "Spiderman" director Sam Raimi, whom they had admired for years." Our style is always about the silence because we find that the really scary aspects always come from the silence," adds Oxide. "We don't think it is scary when there is so much sound, when it comes from so many directions, so many people. To us, what is scary is when you are alone and the room is completely quiet," they said.
"This is a ghost story about a family who moves into this house that's haunted and the girl is pretty much the only one who's being affected by these supernatural beings and no one else believes her," says actress Kristen Stewart, also seen in the movies "Panic Room", "Zathura: A Space Adventure" and "Fierce People". "It is crazy because these things are attacking my character and no one else has ever seen them," she said.
No one except her three-year-old brother Ben, who she realizes, has always seen them but he doesn't speak. Jess' awareness is more gradual. "My character is trying to figure it out and thinks maybe she is crazy, maybe none of this is really happening and she's been going through a lot and this is how it is manifesting itself," explains Stewart. "But it turns out it is not a figment of her imagination at all. When something happens in the middle of the night, that's too weird to explain, she doesn't have the family support system to wake them up and say `look something's going on.' And the thing is her family would love to be there for her but they're in a weird stage of their relationship and the trust is gone.
"The Messengers" also stars Dylan McDermott as Roy Solomon, Penelope Ann Miller as Denise Solomon, and John Corbett as field hand John Burwell.
Get ready to enter the doors of fear as "The Messengers" comes to your favorite theaters starting Wednesday. Distributed by Viva International Pictures. (Press release)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Iloilo. (February 8, 2007 issue)
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