REVIEWS: 15% POSITIVE
Post your own views, info and thoughts.
  — Comment here

In 'The Messengers,' you never know what might jump onto the screen. Alas, an inspired plot never appears.
Sam Adams
Los Angeles Times
The objective view gives the audience too much room to unravel its schematic plot, which is far less inspired than its creepy visuals.

This first American horror effort by the Pang Bros. doesn't deliver.
Michael Rechtshaffen
Hollywood Reporter
While the Pangs, along with Hideo Nakata ("The Ring") and Takashi Shimizu ("The Grudge"), are considered the reigning masters of contemporary Asian horror, there's scant evidence of a visual style to be found here, with the exception of one belonging to Hitchcock's "The Birds."

The Pangs painfully hew to a vision of an idealized Americana with the 'happy ending' coming off as especially egregious.
Ronnie Scheib
Variety
The Pang brothers' signature visual pizzazz is strongly displayed in their first Hollywood studio production, "The Messengers," a haunted farmhouse story boasting excellent atmospherics. Oxide and Danny Pang's trademark spins on composition, timing and special effects, though hardly groundbreaking (and sometimes downright imitative), are impressively, even joyfully rendered, as if inviting viewer complicity. Unfortunately, this playful artistry seldom jibes with the forced family values plotline. The Pangs painfully hew to a vision of an idealized Americana with the "happy ending" coming off as especially egregious. Pic's success will depend on auds' willingness to sacrifice narrative cohesion for an elegant and scary funhouse ride.

The grown-ups fare worse... This may in fact be the most ridiculous performance John Corbett has ever given.
Ty Burr
Boston Globe
The visuals stick with you -- a pair of mottled ghost-legs that appear under a sheet the mother is shaking out, for instance -- and somewhere in "The Messengers" is a neat little metaphor about all the things a teenager sees and feels that no one wants to hear about. For subtext to work, though, you have to have some text on top of it. Instead, "The Messengers" is textbook, and the course it's teaching is HSL: Horror as a Second Language....