Watching “The Messengers” offers an opportunity to consider the mechanics of crafting a supernatural story. We start out with the universal premise that the supernatural disrupts our understanding of cause and effect, which underlies all the tricks and gimmicks that try to spook us. 

Doors close by themselves, stains reappear no matter how many times they are cleaned, animals (and children) behave strangely. As variations on a theme, it’s hard to be surprised by any of it, not even by seeing our expectations tweaked to startle us out of our seats. 

But the Pang Brothers, fresh from their career with Asian horror films, are consummate professionals. Their direction creates a credible, haunted atmosphere to a desolate country house — an atmosphere helped in no small measure by David Geddes‚ rich, stylish, but not overbearing cinematography. “The Messengers” may be by the numbers, but the technical numbers, at least, add up. 

The Fuzzy Math of Formulas

The math in the ghost story formula gets a bit fuzzy, though, when going beyond the basic premise of a supernatural universe into the nature of ghost story plots. As is typical for ghosts — and, to a large extent, with many other horror monsters — there is a back-story, a rationale for the supernatural shenanigans that does little more than provide motivation. In “The Ring,” for example, the cursed videocassette that provokes the death of whoever watches it is the product of an abused child (aren’t they all?) named Samara. But while the “Ring” movies explore the how and what of that abuse, it ultimately never develops Samara as anything more than a vengeful ghost. While the films’ protagonists are, as characters, changed (more or less) by their encounter with Samara, the ghostly girl might as well be as unthinking and unchangeable as a force of nature. She’s certainly just as interesting, which is to say, not really all that interesting. And like most horror-story ghosts and monsters who leave scores of dead innocents in their wake, she is never made to confront the morality of her own actions. No discussion, no drama, nothing.

This lack of real characterization is par for the course in the horror formula; villains are never given an opportunity to learn, change and perhaps even grow from their encounters with victims or antagonists. Half the drama is sucked away from the plot from the get-go, and this is very much true of “The Messengers.” An entire family is slaughtered in its country farmhouse. Years later, when another family escaping its troubles from the city moves in, the teenaged daughter with a credibility problem begins to experience a full-on haunting that only she and her 4-year old brother can see. The only bit of fresh air, other than a welcome lack of gory violence, is that the ghosts don’t fit the traditional pattern of homicidal supernatural entities. It’s more like “The Changeling” rather than “The Ring.”

We do, however, have the default structure of the genre: the plucky heroine trying to solve the mystery of the haunting. Only, there’s no real mystery to solve. By the film’s end — which at least deserves an award for staying away from the clichéd, cynical ambiguous/unhappy ending — we get a solution telegraphed as much by Roger Ebert’s Law of Economy of Characters as it is by a thinly-plotted script. Without any meaningful character development for any of the characters, other than a few broad strokes of the brush, “The Messengers” can’t offer any solid human drama by way of compensation. Throw in other formula classics like the good-looking boy who believes the “crazy” girl when no one else will, and the feeling of having previously been on this ride really sinks in.

What’s really unfortunate is that there is the glimmer of an interesting idea buried beneath all the been-there, done-that. It’s a glimmer that could offer a worthwhile, even Machiavellian, deviation from the formula. It might even take a hum-drum resolution and boost it up to something as cool as, say, the scene in “Blade 3” when Hannibal King and Abigail Whistler are introduced.

But alas, as nicely filmed and earnestly acted as “The Messengers” is, it says something that an essay on the craft of writing horror stories pops into mind while watching it. Not to mention other films like “The Shining.” This isn’t to say “The Messengers” is a boring film, only one whose transparent intentions don't amount to much.

The Messengers. Directed by Danny and Oxide Pang. Written by Mark Wheaton. Starring Kristen Stewart, Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller and John Corbett. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for mature thematic material, disturbing violence and terror).