Why you can trust 12DOVE
The East/West brain drain continues: twins Danny and Oxide Pang (The Eye, Bangkok Haunted) are the latest Asian directors lured by Hollywood moolah. Uprooting Oriental scares and plonking them on a haunted sunflower farm in North Dakota, it’s no wonder The Messengers is an unsatisfying culture-clash mess. It’s a game of two halves, an opening 40 minutes of well-crafted Eastern scares following troubled teen Jess (Kristen Stewart) and her mute toddler brother Ben (Evan Turner) as they encounter ghosts in cellars and killer crows straight out of The Birds. A terrifying, stretched to breaking-point corridor sequence – the ghosts creeping up behind Jess as toddler Ben points in silent terror – is so unbearable you’ll want to peg it, but then it falls apart with an utterly ludicrous, totally out-of-the-blue plot twist suggesting no-brain studio meddling on an epic scale. Message for The Pang Brothers: take the money and run.
The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.
Batman V. Superman star Jesse Eisenberg thinks that playing Lex Luthor in the poorly received film "hurt [his] career in a real way"
Preview Grant Morrison and Matt Fraction's one-page horror stories from Ice Cream Man #43
Sonic 3 isn't even out yet but Sonic 4 is officially happening, racing towards a 2027 release date: "This is not a drill"