The Mothman Prophecies
Short description
John Klein is a Washington journalist still struggling with the death of his wife two years earlier. Before she died, she described seeing a strange figure, and her crash followed soon after. While travelling on business, Klein ends up in Point Pleasant, a small West Virginia town he cannot explain how he reached, where residents report sightings of a huge winged creature with glowing eyes. He learns that the apparition seems to appear to people shortly before disasters strike, and that his wife may have seen the same thing. With local police officer Connie Mills, he begins investigating what the townspeople are witnessing and whether it is a warning, a delusion, or something else.
Mark Pellington directed the film, his second feature after Arlington Road, from a screenplay by Richard Hatem. Richard Gere plays Klein, with Laura Linney as Connie Mills, Will Patton as Gordon Smallwood, Debra Messing as Mary Klein and Alan Bates as Alexander Leek.
Released in January 2002, the film had a budget of about 32 million dollars and took roughly 55 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.2 from around 1,300 votes, while critics gave it 5.5 from 142 reviews, a slightly lower figure than the audience score. It runs 119 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- The Mothman, or Indrid Cold, is shown in the film at best as a distant silhouette, or a fleeting shadow.
- In the scene where John Clyde explains on the phone that he did not call the man at the chemical plant, a discrepancy can be noticed in the movements of John and his reflection in the mirror. Shortly after, when he slams the door on which the mirror hangs, the reflection also reveals an image, presumably belonging to Indrid Cold.
- The end credits of the film state that the true cause of the Silver Bridge collapse was never discovered. This is not true. In reality, after several years of investigation into the cause of the disaster, it was determined that metal fatigue in one of the bridge’s suspension cables was to blame. It failed first (which is what we actually see in the film), and then the others snapped. Furthermore, in the film, the stone towers on either side of the bridge remain standing, while in reality – they were also destroyed.
- The events depicted in the film took place in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. They began on November 12, 1966, and over the course of a year, more than 100 people claimed to have witnessed encounters with the infamous Mothman. At 5 p.m. on December 15, 1967, the 200-meter-long Silver Bridge over the Ohio River suddenly collapsed, along with the rush-hour traffic on it. Forty-six people died. Subsequently, 44 bodies were recovered from the water, while two were never found.
- The Mothman makes fleeting appearances in the film four times: first, flying into Mary Klein’s windshield; second, during John’s conversation with a woman from Point Pleasant; third, when Indrid is glimpsed in the reflection of a mirror on a door when John slams it shut; and fourth, in the reflection of a car window as a severed suspension cable violently strikes the vehicle on the Silver Bridge.
- Filming took place in Washington, D.C., as well as in ten locations in Pennsylvania. It began on January 24, 2001, and ended in May of the same year.
- The film is based on facts, characters, and descriptions from the book of the same name by John E. Keel, who arrived in Point Pleasant in December 1966 and began collecting testimonies from eyewitnesses to the strange events taking place.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
