Brilliantly talented Thai directors Danny and Oxide Pang present their first US-based film "The Messengers" this weekend... Sounds like a typical "haunted house in the middle of nowhere" story to be honest... All-American family leave the big city, move to the sticks, their little kid starts seeing "ghosts", mom and dad dont believe them, family that used to live there disappeared under mysterious circumstances....blah, blah.... You could write this one yourself, sounds seriously derivitive and coming from the guys who gave us such excellent Asian horror fare such as "The Eye"/"Eye 2", "Abnormal Beauty", "Bankok Haunted" and "Bankok Dangerous", this seems like a real step-down...

 

And it seems like they are gonna be remaking their two best known Thai films - "The Eye" and "Bankok Dangerous" for the American market.... <_< So, yet more Asian directors selling out for the Yankee dollar...?

Brilliantly talented Thai directors Danny and Oxide Pang present their first US-based film "The Messengers" this weekend... Sounds like a typical "haunted house in the middle of nowhere" story to be honest... All-American family leave the big city, move to the sticks, their little kid starts seeing "ghosts", mom and dad dont believe them, family that used to live there disappeared under mysterious circumstances....blah, blah.... You could write this one yourself, sounds seriously derivitive and coming from the guys who gave us such excellent Asian horror fare such as "The Eye"/"Eye 2", "Abnormal Beauty", "Bankok Haunted" and "Bankok Dangerous", this seems like a real step-down...

 

And it seems like they are gonna be remaking their two best known Thai films - "The Eye" and "Bankok Dangerous" for the American market.... <_< So, yet more Asian directors selling out for the Yankee dollar...?

 

the reviews have been in the two star area:

 

The Messengers

2 Stars

by Peter Bradshaw/ The Guardian

Friday April 6, 2007

 

Like Takashi "The Grudge" Shimizu, Hong Kong's cult horror directors Oxide and Danny Pang have been brought inside the Hollywood tent by producer Sam Raimi for their first English-language feature. It's pretty ordinary genre stuff, written by US screenwriters who cut their teeth on the Friday the 13th franchise. The result is a cross between videogame-style American horror and Asian-extreme exotica: gaunt midwest farmhouses infested with horrid imps with black hair and grey skin doing their creepy, creaky heavy breathing.

 

and also 2 stars in the Indie:

 

The Messengers (15)

By Anthony Quinn Independent

Published: 06 April 2007

2 Stars

Those Hong Kong fright- merchants Danny and Oxide Pang (The Eye), directing their first Hollywood feature, serve up a slice of American Gothic that's perfectly competent but absolutely undistinguished. Kristen Stewart is the highlight, playing the troubled teenaged daughter of parents (Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller) who have left Chicago in order to set up home in a remote Dakota farmhouse.

 

Those Hong Kong fright- merchants Danny and Oxide Pang (The Eye), directing their first Hollywood feature, serve up a slice of American Gothic that's perfectly competent but absolutely undistinguished. Kristen Stewart is the highlight, playing the troubled teenaged daughter of parents (Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller) who have left Chicago in order to set up home in a remote Dakota farmhouse.

 

The field of sunflowers looks welcoming enough, the Hitchcockian swarm of crows rather less so. Yet the scares that they portend turn out to be less than awesome, the house being haunted by a family that was murdered there years ago, and the ghosts the same black-eyed, whey-faced ghouls that we've seen dozens of times before. It's very stylishly shot and composed, but nothing to give you a sleepless night.

 

i went go see this yesterday and i thought it was alright, i like this kind of film :)

Went to see it at the weekend, competent but dull was my impression, well, to be honest, it left very little impression on me, I've seen this film a thousand times before and seen it done a lot better than this... The Pangs are capable of so much better, as their Thai/Hong Kong films attest, this is just several steps down for them.. One or two of the frights were well orchestrated, but ultimately there is very little of their brio and style in this film... Go rent "The Eye" or "Bankok Dangerous" some time if you want to see the Pangs at their best, ultimately, this film is bit of a bust....

 

4/10

Went to see it at the weekend, competent but dull was my impression, well, to be honest, it left very little impression on me, I've seen this film a thousand times before and seen it done a lot better than this... The Pangs are capable of so much better, as their Thai/Hong Kong films attest, this is just several steps down for them.. One or two of the frights were well orchestrated, but ultimately there is very little of their brio and style in this film... Go rent "The Eye" or "Bankok Dangerous" some time if you want to see the Pangs at their best, ultimately, this film is bit of a bust....

 

4/10

 

wasnt that great, perhaps a dvd of the birds might be a better plan

Has anyone seen this film? I'm currently watching it now as my sister hired it and it's okay...in a poor okay way.

 

It's very The Shining/The Amityville Horror :/.

i loved that film when i went see it at cinemas, downloaded it few weeks after and i'm goin buy it next week if its out on mon

 

i really like this kind of film :)

I found it rather poor, very standard "horror" with an incedibly predicatable plot... Quite shockingly bad when you consider what Danny and Oxide Pang are capable of in their Thai films such as "The Eye" and "Abnormal Beauty"... Another case of SE Asian film-makers just totally underachieving when they go Stateside really....