If you weren't paying attention, you could easily have seen The Mothman Prophecies, and thought "interesting" and never thought about it again because you were expecting a more traditional "horror movie" or some such nonsense where a winged guy comes out of the woods all deranged and starts hacking up the locals. But that is not, anyway, what "Mothman" is about. It's a film that on the surface anyway, doesn't entirely bend to genre. Or you could have missed it entirely because a film about a moth, you thought, sounded really dull and boring. But it wasn't about a moth per se either. So what is Mothman about? Ahhh, that's where it gets interesting...

At its core, Mothman is a film about the fear of the unknown and about warnings missed and warnings heard. The quick review - Mothman Prophecies, based largely on the work of writer John Keel, is about events in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966-67 that lead up the dramatic and tragic collapse of the Silver Bridge (connecting the town to Ohio), that took the lives of forty-six people. Beneath the journalistic element, Mothman plays on our very basic instinctive fear of that which we cannot define, those things that fly in the face of logic, defying it and us at every turn.

Like any good film that sets out to unnerve you and make you think this could happen to you - which is really the engine behind any horror or psychological thriller, because if there's not a chance in hell that you too could fall prey to whatever the horror is, then the film will fall flat on it's face, n'est pas? Mothman does and excellent job of helping you see yourself in this picture.

So when John Klein (most likely based on a the real character of Point Pleasant, Washington, John Keel) and his beautiful, vibrant, and wife Mary (Debra Messing) are house hunting. They are the peak of their lives; successful, young, attractive and happy, and now they have found their perfect dream house. Delirious and happy, John and Mary shut themselves into one of what will be their giant wardrobes for a quick fuck me up|fuck me down session, to which most of us can relate. Even if we haven't yet found our dream house, the happiness of even finding the right apartment is enough to get any couple going, and who wouldn't wish to inaugurate such a thing with some frisky making out when so deliriously happy? The moth that flies fast around the lightbulb when the realtor flips on the switch and catches the two startles Messing and is the beginning of what will be the end.