Mothman Prophecies, The

Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

This is the scariest movie I've ever seen.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

One truly, madly, deeply satisfying creep-out.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It's made with deftly unsettling genre flair.

Film Threat Gareth Von Kallenbach

An entertaining and chilling film that will make you question what you believe about myths and the supernatural.

LA Weekly F. X. Feeney

Pellington's sharp, fastball compositions and nerve-splintering cutting style are of a piece with such intelligence, devilishly mixing shock with optimism.

Newsweek David Ansen

Using shadows and strikingly designed sounds, Pellington skillfully creates an atmosphere of otherworldly, invisible menace. Gere and Linney, both solid, dance around the edges of a romance.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Better than its trailers indicate. Forget the seemingly silly Chapstick moment: Any film that sends a cold shock to your system is doing something right.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Like a time-travel movie, but without the time travel, The Mothman Prophecies delights in playing with cause-and-effect relationships.

USA Today Mike Clark

Compellingly watchable horror-spectacle.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

By the end, an end that has a little too much melodrama to it, we can only shake our heads in wonder.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

As the plot loses steam, director Mark Pellington (whose paranoid thriller "Arlington Road" was one of the worst movies of 1999) tends to rely on cheap tricks to maintain suspense, although the final catastrophe is very nicely done.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The creepy set pieces are repetitive and the payoff is rather unsatisfying, even though the prophecies do eventually pan out.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Ellen A. Kim

It would have made for a cool fictional thriller, but The Mothman Prophecies' attempt to stick to true-life roots paralyzes it from being satisfying. It gives you the tingles all right, but they won't follow you out of the theater.

Variety Robert Koehler

Director Mark Pellington hardly lets a moment pass without suggesting some bad vibes creeping onto the edges of the screen, but he's let down by Richard Hatem's script, based on John A. Keel's book, which delivers an ounce when it promised a gallon.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Despite moments of atmospheric tension and a core of compelling mystery, the film feels remote, cold and, oddly, obvious.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Almost sinks under the weight of too many red herrings, but is rescued by a skewed sense of reality and pervasive sense of dread that should keep audiences from dwelling on them.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The result is a minor picture with a major identity crisis -- it's sort of true and it's sort of bogus and it's ho-hum all the way through.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Watching the film is like getting hooked by a fearful angler who can't successfully reel you in.

Los Angeles Times Jan Stuart

There is very little about the hoary conventions of The Mothman Prophecies that couldn't be improved by a little levity, a little more sunlight and some judicious cutting.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie goes after our dreams by dragging them through our Sept. 11 nightmares with an apocalyptic finale so ludicrous, overedited, and from out of nowhere that it's hard to follow, let alone to believe it's happening.

Time Richard Schickel

Director Pellington's touch is light and flickering, and his actors are solid and persuasive. If you let yourself go with The Mothman Prophecies, it is -- in its lumpen, serious way -- sort of fun.

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

Enjoyable, if utterly stupid, upscale entry in the old Amityville Horror genre -- that is, a horror film allegedly based on spooky and inexplicable real-life events.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The Mothman is singularly ineffective as a threat because it is only vaguely glimpsed, has no nature we can understand, doesn't operate under rules that the story can focus on, and seems to be involved in space-time shifts far beyond its presumed focus. There is also the problem that insects make unsatisfactory villains unless they are very big.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

About as threatening as the real-life insect the apparition resembles; its large, mossy wings may scare some people, but the bug can only damage your woolens. The movie flirts with more damage than it can actually cause.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

So restrained that viewers may start to yearn for a bogeyman to burst from the closet.

Village Voice Mark Holcomb

A diverting pulp time-waster.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Movies like this have been around forever too. They're a normal condition of winter's doldrums, which, in the fullness of time, will pass.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Snail-paced and ultimately dull creepy-crawl.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Nonetheless, the film never amounts to more than the sum of a few good moments, and it leaves the aftertaste of a second-tier X-Files episode.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A gaudy yet grim science-fiction horror movie of such surpassing silliness, humorless intensity and stylistic overkill that watching it may actually put you in a state of paranoia.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Gere, who's credited with keeping the project alive for years, has never thrown himself quite so fully into a role, and Pellington tells the story without a hint of skepticism. I suppose he had no choice. If you're going to treat poppycock as history, you had better believe it.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

This mumbo-jumbo plays like The X Files on Prozac. No wonder the actors look narcotized.