The Messengers

The Pang Brothers are mostly known in the West for a creepy little horror film called The Eye, about a girl who gets a cornea transplant and, as a result, sees more than she bargained for. It had a decent storyline and, above all, an excellent sense of timing that gets you jumping out of your seat.

A similar dynamic runs through The Messengers. It's about an American family who make a new start out in the countryside. At first, only the teenage daughter and her young brother can 'see' any of the nasty goings on, but eventually everyone gets dragged in. The Messengers' use of lighting, sound, camera angles and clever pacing ensure shocks are there, even if the story does not have the originality of the Pang Brothers' earlier work.

Mom and Dad take their children, Jess and Ben, out to an isolated farmhouse where they all plan to make a new start. There are hints of problems involving the kids, but it's also make-or-break time for Dad, who has left the city and needs to make a success of farming sunflowers.

Frantic black-and-white horror sequences before the opening credits show us what happened to the last family. They got terrorised and flung about the house by very malevolent unseen forces. Hint: this is not going to be a subtle, CGI-free ride.

A standard convention in the horror genre will have a small group of characters entering a strange and ultimately threatening setting (the farmhouse, of course, is out of range of mobile phones). As they enter new territory, the visual style will emphasise ominous qualities (dark cellar, low lighting and exaggerated camera angles). Sound often underlines what we cannot see, increasing a sense of dread. Often the monstrous or gothic threat parallels a psychological state of the victim (we learn Jess is alienated from her parents after 'screwing up' back home in Chicago).

Most landmark horror movies have used these conventions in one way or another. The Pang Brothers, who started without big Hollywood budgets, have stuck to their art. There is no excessive background music, for instance. "Our style is always about the silence because we find that the really scary aspects always come from the silence," says Oxide Pang. "We don't think it is scary when there is so much sound, when it comes from so many directions, so many people. To us, what is scary is when you are alone and the room is completely quiet."

A secondary technique, linking psychotherapy and horror, is equally well done. The 'haunted house' representing the haunted or disturbed mind. Some rooms are just too horrible to contemplate; inner demons are buried deep in the basement of the subconscious. But, naturally, like all good horror heroines, Jess will go into the cellar, and enter the rooms where ghosts of the past reach out to grab her. Her isolation is notched up further when Mom and Dad don't believe her. "She's just having a hard time adjusting," they say. Put any injuries down to self-harm. If Jess really went through or saw what her screams suggest, she would be in the loony bin before the end of act one - but we mustn't spoil the story - she is far too good at screaming! It is only after Mom and Dad have an argument (and so also become isolated) that they too become prone to horrific visions.

There is no doubting The Messengers can make you jump, shriek, or hide behind your hands and peek out through the cracks of your fingers. But it does have the predictability of a fairground ghost-ride. Someone creeping up behind you and going "Boo!" can be scary, but it's a bit unoriginal.

The Messengers is American Gothic. Sunflowers blowing in the wind, a run-down farm, crows circling overhead, and lots of threatening-looking pitchforks nice and handy. The plot is flimsy and miniscule, but it can still cope with delivering Friday night shocks to the heart as well as any fairground attraction.