The Mothman Prophecies: Made me Want to Know More!

Do you believe in psychic connections, predictions of the future, mass hallucinations, loved ones connecting with us after death, or maybe UFO's?

Take your choice -- any of these or none of these -- could be the premise of this rather strange and disturbing movie. Based on "true events" of a 1967 tragedy in Port Pleasant, West Virginia, the story revolves around Richard Gere's character, John Klein, a reporter for the Washington Post.

I'll try not to spoil the plot for you, but I do include quite a lot of details about the story.

Debra Messing (definitely out of character as Grace of NBC's comedy Will & Grace) plays John's wife, Mary. The happily married couple venture out one evening shortly before Christmas to buy a house.

After a car accident on the way home, their lives are altered dramatically with the appearance of a mysterious apparition that causes Mary to crash the car.

In the hospital with tears rolling from her frightened eyes, Mary asks John, "You didn't see it, did you?"

Two years later as John is driving to Richmond to interview the Governor, he mysteriously ends up several hundreds of miles from his destination and doesn't know how he arrived. His car suddenly dies and you think, okay, a UFO is about to beam him up.

John finds himself stranded at 2:30am on a lonely stretch of road in Port Washington, WV. When he asks for help at the home of Gordon Smallwood, he is greeted with a shotgun in his face. From there the tale grows more intriguing by the moment.

Through a series of bizarre occurrences, chance encounters, and chilling prophecies John is pulled deeper and deeper into the mystery engulfing him.

Gordon hears voices from his sink that tell him of deaths that later are reported on the news. Strange phone calls with voices "not coming from human vocal cords" add to the eeriness and darkness of this movie.

John connects with the very attractive police sergeant, Connie Parker. She shares her case files with him, as well as her haunting dream of her own near death.

Strange sightings of mothlike creatures with glowing red eyes are being reported around Port Pleasant. (Based on many incidents actually reported to the police back during the sixties.) The whole time my mind is racing... is that true... were they sent there to warn people of death... or to bring death? Were they angels? Were they demons? Or were they just a convenient method to move the plot along?

When there is a new prediction of "death on the Ohio River" John fears that the chemical plant will have a massive accident. (This is an area where there were many actual "mothman" sightings, as well as UFO sightings during the sixties as well.)

John becomes obsessed with solving the mystery, probably partially because of his reporter's instinct and for more personal reasons related to his wife's strange visions and the sketches she drew of the mothlike creature with red eyes.

John learns that such "mothman" sightings have been reported in other geographic areas just before major disasters that resulted in multiple deaths. After the tragedies occurred, the apparitions were never seen again in the area.

There are phone calls that aren't really phone calls made from mysterious beings or non-beings. The Mothman Prophecies makes you wonder the entire time exactly what really is going on.

What you expect is not what you see and what you ultimately see is probably not what you expected. It is a mysterious and somewhat confusing movie, but it is suspenseful enough to keep you interested and guessing the whole time.

The movie intrigued me enough to make me want to learn more about the actual incidents upon which this movie is based and, thus, I included some of those historical references in my review.

Richard Gere does a very believable job of playing first the distraught husband and then the baffled reporter, John Klein.

His friend and co-worker, who seems to be the only connection he keeps with his job while he is immersed in the Mothman mystery, is played by David Eigenburg, best known to me as "Steve" on HBO's Sex and the City.

The police officer to whom everyone in town seems to confide about the strange occurrences is played by Laura Linney, who worked with Gere in Primal Fear.

Her revelation to John about a strange dream is what finally tied the movie together for me at the end. At least I got one "Aha!" during the whole movie.

Will Patton (Armageddon, The Agency) plays Gordon Smallwood, whom you expect to erupt into violence or go completely insane at any moment.

Alan Bates plays the author of a book about mysterious phenomena and who experienced the "Mothman" firsthand with dire personal consequences.

This movie was two hours of good, but not great entertainment. It will probably continue to make me wonder and to think about how much was really true and how much was just Hollywood.