Cinematical

What do you do when there are no more Asian horror flicks left to rip off remake? Well, you hire some of the finest Asian filmmakers, fly 'em over here, and hire them to churn out American horror movies, of course! After having Takashi Shimizu remake his own The Grudge for American audiences (and to much profit, of course), Sony tapped the vaunted Pang Brothers (The Eye) to helm something kinda similar to the most popular Asian horrorshows ... but not really. This explains why this new trailer for The Messengers looks a whole lot like just another haunted house piece, only with pale phantom limbs where they shouldn't be and those creepy twisted bodies that twitch around in icky fashion. (Call it The Amityville Horror meets The Grudge, as if there's much difference in the first place.)

Written by Mark Wheaton (Firestorm: Last Stand at Yellowstone) from a story by Todd Farmer (Jason X), The Messengers seems to be about a teenage girl who sees spooky spirits after her family moves into a dusty old house. Imagine that.

If there's a saving grace here (aside from it being a horror movie and therefore something I must see eventually) it could be the cast: Kristen Stewart, Penelope Ann Miller, Dylan McDermott and John Corbett can usually contribute enough for a half-decent 90-some minutes. Either way, you can expect a PG-13 all the way from The Messengers, as it hails from Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures, the diet-horror production shingle that gave you Boogeyman and The Grudge 2. Let's just hope the movie's a lot better than the trailer. The Messengers opens on February 9.