34
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 50TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghTV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonaghThe trouble isn't just that this haunted-house story, written by Mark Wheaton and directed by Hong Kong filmmakers Danny and Oxide Pang, is both formulaic and derivative. It's that it's completely free of atmosphere, the very thing that their 2002 "The Eye" had in such creepy abundance.
- 50The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe Messengers, dutifully cobbles together a pastiche of successful horror films past--"The Grudge," "The Sixth Sense," "The Birds," "The Amityville Horror," and "The Shining"--without asserting a single original idea of its own.
- Like too many horror pictures, The Messengers becomes more boringly prosaic as it goes along, and there's an 11th-hour plot twist so dumb and poorly articulated that it destroys the movie. That's a shame, because shot for shot, the Pangs might be the most terrifying filmmakers alive.
- 50VarietyRonnie ScheibVarietyRonnie ScheibThough the Pangs prove culturally adaptive on a visual level, they seem completely clueless as to the tonal modalities of Mark Wheaton's admittedly undercooked, all-American script.
- The Messengers is at once ruthlessly efficient and shamelessly distended.
- 38Boston GlobeTy BurrBoston GlobeTy BurrThe Messengers is textbook, and the course it's teaching is HSL: Horror as a Second Language.
- 38ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliIt's a little sad that The Messengers is ultimately a good candidate for burial in a toxic waste dump because there are some good elements contained herein.
- 30The Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenThe Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenA tepid ghost story filled with all the usual things that go bump in the night minus the somewhat crucial element of suspense, this bland effort from Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert's Ghost House Pictures is surprisingly devoid of the creepy, claustrophobic atmospherics that haunt the brothers' Asian work.
- 30L.A. WeeklyL.A. WeeklyThe end result looks heavily doctored: The Sam Raimi-produced feature is a badly acted, nonsensical patchwork of fake scares, crow attacks and wall-crawling CGI spooks, capped by a DVD extra of an ending that must have the real resolution gagged somewhere in a closet.
- 25New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickIt's nicely photographed but slow-moving, dull and utterly predictable.