11/Aug/07, The Messengers

Spirit levels
Each week we show a DVD to the people who really know. Here, a group of spiritualists commune with The Messengers
10:41min The 16-year-old Kay (Kristen Stewart) gets spooky vibes after moving into a remote Dakota farmhouse with her family. “Your energies are all over the place when you’re in puberty,” Michelle notes. “That’s when you’re more susceptible to the psychic.”

17:06min Kay’s toddler brother Ben (Evan Turner) is fascinated by a hanging corpse that nobody else can see. “Children often tell me about things they see,” Michelle nods. Graham adds: “As you grow up you learn to use logic instead of intuition and cut a lot of things out. The age when children have imaginary friends is the age when they’re most tuned in to psychic phenomena.”

18:06min A damp patch on a wall mysteriously returns after being cleaned. “What you’ll often find is that someone has built a wall that wasn’t there before, and a spirit will try and come through the wall,” Graham explains.

30:57min Crows attack Kay’s father. “Animals will come to wherever there is psychic activity,” says Inbaal. “If I do a reading from home, my cats come and lie on my tarot cards.”

41:27min Kay asks Ben where the spirit is, and he points. Graham approves: “She’s using him as her eyes – that’s a nice touch.” But Inbaal is puzzled as to why Ben isn’t talking: “A psychic kid would start talking sooner – I could speak by the time I was 1.”

53:54min “This land gets hold of people,” John the farmhand warns Kay. “There could have been a battle on the site of the house,” Graham suggests, “Or a Native American settlement.”

58:19min Kay is attacked by the spirit and taken to hospital, but the doctors think that she has harmed herself. “There is a fine line between psychic and psychological disturbance,” Hayley admits.

67:08min Kay comes face to face with the female spirit. “She looks like she’s drowning,” Inbaal notices. “Sometimes spirits will show you how they died.”

VERDICT

Our panel were reasonably impressed, though they hadn’t experienced spiritual disturbances quite as violent as Kay’s, and found it hard at times to distinguish what was happening from what the characters were imagining.

The Messengers is out to rent and buy on DVD on Mon. Thanks to Graham Dare, Sensitives Clinic, Hatton Garden, London EC1 (www.sensitives.co.uk 020-7831 9387); Michelle Devane (www.spiritual-healers.co.uk); Hayley Rogers (www.salomonhealing.com) and Inbaal (inbaal.com, who appears daily on the Psychic Channel, Sky 886). For Richard Dawkins’s views on psychic phenomena, see page 33. Interview by Ed Potton

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