From the folklore of West Virginia comes the Mothman, a creature sporadically sighted and thought to herald the coming of disasters and death. Documentary The Mothman Legacy takes a look at the urban myth and how it has cemented itself into the minds of locals, and is coming to digital streaming platforms on October 20th, just in time for Halloween.
The creation of documentary filmmaker Seth Breedlove, the pic examines the enigmatic entity and its history. Although typically thought of as being something rooted in the ‘60s, after which time reports of a “winged, red-eyed creature” began to peter out, the film imagines the possibility of it having been around for far longer than a few mere decades, and with much wider scope than merely the confines of the Mountain State. It features interviews with locals who have encountered the Mothman alongside people who have studied and written about the sightings.
The isn’t the first time that Breedlove has examined the legend. 2017’s The Mothman of Point Pleasant details the thirteen months from November 1966 to December 1967 when regular sightings were recorded, and while not a direct continuation, 2019’s Terror in the Skies references the entity as it details the various winged creatures to have been reportedly spotted throughout Illinois.
The Mothman has also appeared in popular culture, most notably in 2002 movie The Mothman Prophecies, loosely based on the nonfiction book of the same name by journalist John Keel about his investigation into the figure. Here, the creature was cast as a portentous entity attempting to warn humanity of encroaching dangers but lacking the language to make its future knowledge understood, and featured a fictionalized account of the events surrounding the collapse of the Silver Bridge, a disaster that popularized the myth.
If The Mothman Legacy is anything like the trailer for it above, it’ll be a suitably unnerving examination of a phenomenon made all the more sinister through the lack of understanding of its central figure.
