What Message?

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The search for autumnal horror movies is a never-ending one.  Can it really be that auteurs just don’t—drenched in the California sun—get that October feeling?  There’s something in the turning of the leaves and the appearance of pumpkins that changes everything.  And it works every year.  So it was that I thought of The Messengers.  I’d watched this years ago but found it somewhat unremarkable.  I seemed to recollect that, being based on a farm, it was autumnal in character, so I decided to try it again.  I remembered once more why I hadn’t watched it for years.  It’s a serviceable movie, but it is really set in summer (short sleeves the whole way through) and although August farm visits put me in the fall mood, this one is incoherent enough to prevent that feeling from catching on.

Jess is a girl with a past.  Driving under the influence, in Chicago, she was in a crash that rendered her baby brother mute.  In response her parents decide to move to a sunflower farm in North Dakota.  There the crows (actually ravens) attack them.  A stranger arrives and offers to help out.  Of course the house is haunted because of some past murders, but when the crows attack the hired help, it spurs him into a relapse—he’d lived here before and had killed his family, and so he decides to kill this new one too.  Being PG-13, they survive and the house swallows up the murderer from the past.  It’s never quite clear what the crows (the presumed messengers) really want to convey.  Are they trying to warn the family?  Are they trying to awake a killer’s memory?  What do they want?

This is an early Kristen Stewart movie—she’ll go on to more sophisticated horror films.  William B. Davis, with only cameo appearances, offers echoes of The X-Files.  Casting the generally congenial John Corbett as a killer is a bit of a stretch, however.  More intriguing, in this more global world, are the directors—the Pang brothers.  Known for their east Asian movies, including award-winning horror, they took on this American-themed, shot in Canada, project.  It had the backing of a few production companies and a reasonable budget.  Still, it struggles to be memorable.  I seem to recall that the prequel might’ve been a bit better.  But was it autumn-based?  I can’t recall and it’s that time of year when seeing falling leaves and a pumpkin or two make for essential viewing.

Magic Bibles

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With autumn not far down the road, my mind turns to scary things. Actually, it is that way quite a bit of the time. Nevertheless, movies about farms are often the setting for the creepy—the sense of isolation, the sharp implements farmers use, the rustling of the drying crops in the wind. A couple years back I watched The Messengers. As a horror film it had a number of good scares, but the menace always seemed somewhat restrained. Nothing profound happens, and it is a film fairly easily forgotten. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon and The Messengers 2: the Scarecrow suggested itself to me. I began watching in an ambivalent mood, but when the first scene began with the protagonist (whose name I’ve forgotten) dropping his Bible on the porch chair as he loosens his tie to work on a derelict water pump, I was curious. When his wife arrives home and asks why he left church before it was over, my interest grew. This direct-to-video prequel turned out to be a cut-budget horror flick based squarely on a religious parable.

In a faustian moment of abandon, and at the advice of a jocular neighbor named Jude (Iscariot, anyone?), our hero erects a scarecrow to try to improve his lot (literally). To give credit where it is due, the scarecrow is distinctly disturbing. The scene of John (okay, I looked it up) nailing the scarecrow to the cross is clearly a crucifixion scene, and the blood that will later appear at the foot of the cross bears this out. Before he realizes that the scarecrow is evil, John hears ghostly children singing in his cornfield. The song is “Jesus Loves Me.” There is a strong fertility goddess theme running through the film and when Jude reveals that his wife has a magic book that explains all the benefits of the scarecrow, John decides to cut it down. The scarecrow, predictably, resurrects.

Meanwhile, John’s Christian family thinks he has gone insane. Or worse, backslidden. As he tries to explain to his wife what has happened, John shows her the magic book and she insists “It’s just your old Bible,” and it is. Heathenish occult instruction transubstantiates into Christian scripture. It is tough to tell one sacred writing from another. For cut-rate horror fodder, this is wonderful commentary on religious sensibilities. Although straight-to-video movies are not high art, and will never receive academy award nominations, they do reflect popular religious beliefs. Scholars are now in search of such beliefs in ancient societies since “official religion” almost never reflects what actual hoi polloi think. Lived religion seldom conforms to the intricacies envisioned by religious founders, and yet it is out there on the Internet for all to see. Maybe the messengers in this film are not the crows after all. The point of the parable? Stay true to your Christian upbringing or else the scarecrow will get you.