The Mothman Prophecies: A Movie Recap/Review with Unexpected Insights for the Covid-Conscious from a West Virginia Cryptid
If you’re like me, you remain nostalgic for the unity and hope we shared during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
One thing I don’t miss? The struggle to find quality entertainment. Unplugged from our usual pastimes and hangouts in social settings, many of us became more dependent on our televisions. In my home, it didn’t take us long to knock out our watchlists. There was precious little new content to fill the void since the film industry was on pause too.
One day during a cleaning rampage, we came across a box of old DVDs. Many of the movies were at least a decade old, and it had been just as long since we’d watched them. Which meant we’d forgotten enough about the films that it was almost like having a box of new movies to watch all of a sudden. Score! We dug through them and pulled out some old favorites.
Hands down, my favorite back then was – and remains today – ‘The Mothman Prophecies’ (2002).
During a recent rewatch, it finally dawned on me why I feel such an affinity for this movie. I think it may be the most compelling metaphor for the plight of the Covid-Conscious throughout this enduring pandemic.
If you enjoy scary, suspenseful movies, watch it. After five years of living through an ongoing pandemic and remaining resilient enough to face reality, you’ll likely see this film in a whole new light. If you’re not into creepy movies, I’ll do my best to give you a recap/review and explain how profoundly the story mirrors our current circumstances.
Consider this your official spoiler alert.
‘The Mothman Prophecies’ is loosely inspired by a book of the same name by the late journalist John Keel. (The book bears no real resemblance to the movie; it is not a story, but a collection of witness accounts of some weird shit that went down in Point Pleasant, West Virginia and elsewhere in the world in the 1960s.)
In the movie, we meet protagonist John Klein (played by Richard Gere), star reporter for the Washington Post. You immediately like him for telling his boss to fuck off when he’s pressed to attend the office Christmas party. John has plans to tour houses on the market with his wife Mary (Deborah Messing) and refuses to break them. The two have serious newlywed vibes and can’t keep their hands off each other. After they decide to buy the house they’ve just toured (and desecrated the bedroom closet in), they drive away, only to suffer a terrible wreck. Mary was at the wheel when she saw a strange moth-like creature with glowing red eyes come barreling toward them, so she swerved. They collide with another vehicle and her head smashes against the glass, knocking her unconscious.
In the hospital, Mary regains consciousness. “You didn’t see it, did you?” She tearfully asks John.
In the next scene, a scan reveals she has a glioblastoma – unrelated to the accident – and she’s dying. As John sits dutifully by her bedside and tries to comfort her, she tells him “I want you to be happy.”
We don’t see Mary alive after this. John gets the call. He rushes to the hospital. She’s gone.
While he’s packing her belongings up, he flips through her journal to find it’s full of drawings. They start out as innocent-looking angelic figures but quickly progress to dark, monstrous-looking winged creatures with glowing red eyes.
Fast forward two years later, and grieving widower John has thrown himself into his work. He’s still wearing his wedding band and he’s dodging attempts by his friend Ed to set him up with single women. Emotionally, he’s still married, still clinging to Mary. He can’t let her go. When he finds himself wired and unable to sleep one evening, he drives overnight to Virginia for an interview with the governor the following day.
Only he never makes it to Virginia.
John suddenly finds himself stranded on the side of the road in a residential area. He steps out of his car and knocks on the door of a nearby home. The man who answers is Gordon Smallwood (played by Will Patton). To his surprise, Gordon says, “I’ve been waiting for you.” Then he pulls John inside and holds him at gunpoint till Sherriff Connie (played by Laura Linney) arrives. Gordon insists it’s the 3rd night John has come knocking on the door at 2 am. John insists it’s not true and he has no idea what’s happening. Connie recognizes John from his appearances in the media and decides he’s not a threat. Tough but motherly, she gets Gordon to put the gun down and chill the fuck out. She takes John with her and drops him off at the world’s creepiest-looking roadside motel.
The front desk attendant is the first one to enlighten John as to his whereabouts. He’s in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, which is nowhere near where he’s supposed to be.
The following day, John has his car towed to a garage. They can’t find anything wrong with it. As he’s walking around in downtown Point Pleasant, he runs into Gordon again and apologizes for their ‘misunderstanding.’ When John explains he doesn’t know how he ended up on Gordon’s doorstep the night before, it gives Gordon some validation he desperately needs, that he’s “not crazy.” So begins an unlikely bond between the two men.
As a journalist, John can’t help but dig deeper when a story this bizzare falls into his lap. He and Connie spend time together delving into the weird events that have been happening lately in the small town. She shares police reports with him and takes him to meet the locals who have witnessed the weird shit going on in Point Pleasant. Lights in the sky, creepy phone calls, and sightings of a mothlike creature are keeping the people of Point Pleasant up at night.
John runs into Gordon again. Gordon mentions he’s been hearing voices. They make some very specific predictions about a tragedy and the deaths which follow. Next, he shows John some creepy drawings which look frighteningly similar to the sketches in Mary’s journal. John notices blood is dripping from Gordon’s ear.
Now shit is getting real. Now there’s a connection between John’s late wife and the weirdness afoot in this small West Virginia town. After sharing that his wife’s glioblastoma had produced similar hallucinations, we next find John accompanying Gordon and his wife Denise to a doctor’s appointment. Gordon gets the news that his scans came back clear. There’s nothing wrong with him.
It was just a headache.
I have never felt more for a character on film than I do for Gordon Smallwood, especially in this scene. He’s haunted by the knowledge that something is very wrong. No one else sees or hears the things he does, so when predictions of disaster are spoken to him, it’s a heavy weight for one man to bear. His posture visibly changes as the story progresses; his head tilts increasingly to one side as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders. And although no one ever calls him ‘crazy,’ he’s constantly defending himself and his sanity, knowing how his actions are being perceived.
Gordon doesn’t want this. He’s begging for help. After the doctor gives him a clean bill of health, he pushes back and states that he’s having hallucinations. Dr. Gaslighter insists it’s just a ‘first class migraine,’ offers a prescription, and tells him he’s welcome to go get a second opinion. Overwhelmed with emotion, Gordon storms out, only to have his wife chase him down and strongarm him against the wall. “There’s nothing wrong,” she tells him repeatedly. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong.”
Connie and John discuss the disturbing messages Gordon is receiving. Connie confesses to having a strange dream of her own, which predicts her own death by drowning. The two are facing each other on a sofa, presumably at Connie’s house. It feels intimate, especially when he reaches up to dry tears from Connie’s face. The romantic overtones between him and Connie are growing, but he’s holding back. He’s still wearing his wedding band, still clinging to the past. And in the creepy hotel room where he’s now on extended stay, he keeps a picture of Mary on the mirror so she’s never far from his thoughts.
The following day, Gordon invites John over to his house. In a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of his fate, he’s standing on what looks like a gravesite in his yard. Gordon confides in John that he met the man who’s been foretelling disaster. A man calling himself ‘Indrid Cold’ came to Gordon in a flash of light, spoke to him like an angel from the New Testament revealing himself to man, and made more predictions of disaster.
Hairs stand up on the back of my neck at the next pivotal scene in the story. John gets a call from an excited Gordon that night in his creepy hotel room. Gordon’s not alone. Indrid Cold – whom we come to see is the allusive Mothman – is there too. John asks to speak to him. Indrid Cold’s distorted, electronic voice is spooky enough, but it’s the way he can accurately answer any question John asks him that will send chills down your spine. When John hides an object in his shoe as a test and asks the voice on the phone what it is, Indrid Cold does not disappoint.
“Chaaaaaaaaaapstick.”
It’s pants-shitting terrifying. It’s the stuff of nightmares.
I’ll never look at Chapstick the same way again.
John wants answers. He heads to Chicago and tracks down Alexander Leek, author of a non-fiction book which recounts his experiences with Mothman-like entities. Leek explains to John the beings are real, but most people aren’t sensitive enough to see them; one must experience trauma in order to notice them. This resonates deeply for me when I think of those of us who are neurodivergent, disabled, chronically ill, and marginalized in other capacities. Being categorically different from the majority due to factors beyond our control is a trauma all its own. It makes perfect sense that sentinels are born of the pain of this lived experience. As outsiders who are largely left to fend for ourselves throughout life, we’re acutely aware of patterns, hypersensitive to threats, and empathetic to the suffering of others. We hear the future because we’re listening to the uncomfortable truths which others willfully tune out. Blessing or curse, this is our burden to bear in life.
This is the weight on our shoulders.
Alexander Leek insists the prophetic messages are a curse. He gives John a firm warning about Point Pleasant. “Whatever brought you there, brought you there to die. Don’t go back there.”
Against Leek’s guidance, John returns to Point Pleasant, where a large crowd is gathered for the lighting of the town’s Christmas tree. It’s starting to feel like John belongs there. Connie gives him a hug that lingers a little too long. He’s on a first-name basis with so many of the locals that he no longer seems to stick out as an outsider. John spots Denise alone in the crowd and asks where Gordon is. He learns Denise left him after Gordon’s job let him go. Abandonment is a real and devastating consequence for those who can’t pretend that all is normal, and it’s heartbreaking to see how quickly it happens to Gordon.
On his way back to his hotel, John sees Gordon standing on the Silver Bridge. John tries to coax him away. Gordon says he’s waiting for Indrid Cold.
The following morning, John gets an unsettling call from Gordon. He rushes to the Smallwood home and finds Gordon dead on the ground outside. According to Connie, he’d been gone for at least 8 hours, but John insists they spoke on the phone no more than an hour ago. More weirdness ensues when the fire chief mentions a voice mail from John that he doesn’t remember leaving, and Connie has an encounter with a woman who looks just like Mary’s picture. What the fuck is happening in Point Pleasant, anyway?
John races back to Chicago to see Alexander Leek again. Leek tells him the prophetic messages he received nearly destroyed him. He explains how after losing his family, his career, and four years in a psychiatric hospital, he turned away from the voices and never looked back. Although Leek distanced himself from the messengers of doom, he isn’t unmarred by the experience. His cold stares and unnerving tics are scary as hell in their own right. He’s a tortured soul, a man who remains haunted. There are remnants in him of the same madness which overtook Gordon Smallwood.
Or maybe what looked like madness in both men was simply the human mind struggling to process a series of thoroughly unnatural events. They weren’t wrong, after all. The messages they were given contained predictions which came true.
It finally happens to John. He receives a clear message: “Great tragedy on the River Ohio.”
He believes some shit is going to go down at the chemical plant. He tells Connie the message came from Indrid Cold. He asks her to get reassigned to patrol a different area, warning her to stay far away from the plant. Connie responds like a normal person would, with words that will feel familiar to many of us.
“I don’t believe in Indrid Cold. He may be real to you, but he’s not real to me. I will not live my life like that.”
John can’t be deterred. He’s convinced something bad is going to happen, and it’s going to go down on the day the governor of Virginia is flying in for a visit. This, by the way, is the same governor he was on the way to interview at the start of the story, but got sidetracked chasing Mothman in Point Pleasant. John tries to intervene and asks the governor to shut down the plant. The governor tells him to fuck off. At this point, it’s worrisome to see how John seems to have bailed on his job, just like Gordon did. He’s also trying to intervene without evidence to stop some big abstract tragedy from happening, just like Leek did.
I’m always rooting for John, so it’s kind of disappointing when nothing happens at the chemical plant.
The next creepy message John gets is on a piece of paper. It says Mary will call him at their home the following day. He tells Connie about it, bids her farewell and races home for a little phone catch-up with his dead wife. Seems like a great idea, right?
The next day, he waits by the phone. It rings. He answers.
It’s not Mary.
It’s Connie. She invites him to come spend Christmas with her and her family in Point Pleasant.
John nervously eyeballs the clock and asks if he can call Connie back.
Connie serves up some tough love and it’s just what he needs.
She tells him no.
She tells him that whoever calls him may sound like Mary, but it won’t be her.
That’s because Mary is dead.
And the only thing John has any control over is how he wants to remember her.
John breaks into tears. “I miss her,” he says as he weeps uncontrollably. He finally acknowledges his wife is gone – kind of like how all the comforts of a normal, predictable life before March of 2020 are gone for all of us. Connie got through to him. He understands he has to move on, rebuild his life, and adapt to a world without Mary.
He chooses to honor the memory of the real Mary, not a mere illusion of her.
He remembers her as the Mary who whispered to him from her deathbed, “I want you to be happy.”
After he hangs up with Connie, the phone rings.
He unplugs the cord from the wall.
It continues to ring. He picks up the receiver and beats the shit out of it. Then he races out of the house and speeds back to Connie in West Virginia.
Too bad the story couldn’t have ended there.
John arrives back in Point Pleasant to find traffic backed up on the Silver Bridge, which connects West Virginia to Ohio. Something tells him that this is it – the great tragedy on the River Ohio he was warned would happen. He senses it’s going to collapse. He abandons his car and sprints across the bridge on foot, yelling at people to get out and run.
People either ignore him or yell at him to get out of the road. The bridge collapses. The cars on the bridge, and the passengers inside, all tumble into the chilly waters of the Ohio River.
And down goes Connie’s patrol car, with her trapped inside. John sees it happen and dives in to save her.
He pulls her from the water. In defiance of her own prophetic dream of death by drowning, Connie survives.
And this is where I see us, the Covid-Conscious.
We are John Klein, huddling next to Connie under a blanket on an ambulance (which is such a worn-out movie cliché it’s beyond comical. As a former EMT-I, I never once treated a patient by wrapping a blanket around their shoulders while they sat on the back bumper of the ambulance. That said, I love this movie so much, I can forgive the fucked up trivialization of emergency medical care at a mass casualty incident).
But I digress.
This is our story, and we are John Klein.
We’ve endured traumas which have made us more sensitive, more intuitive, more capable of predicting the likely outcomes of catastrophic events.
We are brave and clear-headed enough to accept we cannot resurrect the past, cannot pretend to relive it without consequence. We are so committed to facing and embracing the truth, it makes others uncomfortable.
When those around us can’t gaslight us back into believing everything is normal and all will be okay, they abandon us.
We don’t know exactly how or when it will happen, but we understand that collapse and devastation is imminent.
We can’t stop it.
Nor can we stop ourselves from doing everything we can to minimize the damage and protect others from the harm that is coming.
We are John Klein and we’re standing on the Silver Bridge.
Save the ones you can. Then save yourself.
I’d like to think that John was in a better place at the end of the story. His journey began as a quest for truth, morphed into a desperate mission to bring his wife back from the dead, and finally evolved into him finding peace and connection in the wake of tragedy. John found a new home, a new community, and a new family in the most unlikely of places.
He made a conscious decision to embrace what was ahead of him instead of what was behind him.
I think we could all say the same for ourselves.
The movie ends with a chilling note on the screen:
The ultimate cause of the collapse of the Silver Bridge was never determined.
This is far from true.
It was determined that the Silver Bridge collapsed during heavy traffic due to a failure of a single eyebar in one of the suspension chains. It took three years for a team to fully investigate the root cause of that failure, which was found to be a fracture caused by an equipment flaw that was just 0.1 inches deep. This discovery led to major changes in the way bridges in the U.S. are inspected and maintained, and has no doubt prevented additional collapses from happening.
Thus, it’s strange this information was excluded from the ending.
In hindsight, I realize it may be the most honest part of the story the filmmaker wanted to tell. Inherent to the human experience is our need to believe tragedies just happen and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. It frees us from responsibility. It allows us to ignore all intuition suggesting otherwise, all evidence to the contrary. It’s a comforting story humans tell themselves time and time again.
Not all humans, though.
If you’ve made it this far, you’re not like most humans. You’re a John Klein.
Be proud of who you are. You live in reality. You adapt. You see tragedy coming and you face it. Then you minimize harm and save lives.
And you deserve a community that loves and appreciates you for it.
Speaking of community, Mothman remains a beloved legend in Point Pleasant. Many believe Mothman was real and made appearances to warn people of tragedies. If he were human, he’d be hated for doing just that, but because he’s a folkloric icon, he gets a pass.
There’s a 12-foot statue of Mothman in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It has red eyes and wings that have strategically placed holes in them to keep the wind from picking up the statue and sending it flying (although if it did, W.H.O. and C.D.C. alike would spend years denying that Mothman is airborne). It’s made of stainless steel, so it looks more like a robot than a humanoid creature to me.
And it has a very pronounced rear end.
I shit you not. Google Mothman’s ass. It has its own worldwide community of devoted fans. People travel from all over the globe to Point Pleasant to touch it, take selfies with it, and leave money and flowers in it as tributes.
Some even kiss the Mothman’s ass for good luck. I think I’d have to draw the line there, but I wouldn’t judge if that were your thing. Just remember it’s made of steel and it might just burn your lips.
Do not attempt without chaaaaaaaaapstick.
In good humor and solidarity,
Guiness Pig
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