Review: Henry Poole is Here

In “The Mothman Prophesies” (2002) Mark Pellington directed Richard Gere in an affecting tale of a reporter who lost his wife. Gere’s grieving and initially disbelieving character decoded disturbing signals from beyond that were channeled through electronic fixtures. Now Pellington directs Luke Wilson as a character facing a comparable test of faith in “Henry Poole Is Here.” Both films begin with house-hunting. Both turn on the supernatural. Luke’s Henry Poole buys a house near the one where he grew up. In “Arlington Heights” (1999) Pellington’s protagonist was a widower with life-threatening issues with his new neighbors. Poole’s neighbors are middle-aged Esperanza (Adriana Barraza, “Babel”) and young mom Dawn (Radha Mitchell, “High Art”). Both have recently lost the men in their lives. They bring plates of tamales and cookies to the slovenly, despondent Poole, who’s living on Krispy Kremes and champagne. A third woman in his life is a Chomsky-quoting clerk (Rachel Seiferth) at the local supermarket who cites the incidence of alcohol poisoning in Russia. Her name is Patience, if there’s not enough symbolism for a Dawn-of-Hope (“esperanza” is Spanish for “hope.”) Poole finds a stain on the wall of his stucco house. Esperanza sees Christ’s face there, Dawn’s mute 6-year-old speaks again after touching the stain and Patience casts off her thick eyeglasses after her contact. Poole does not believe. The script by Albert Torres makes much of the tense of a verb uttered in a hospital room. This inspires Poole to change the tense of a verb he earlier wrote on the wall of his house. Pellington imbues “Henry Poole is Here” with his own crisis: his wife died suddenly in 2004 and he’s now raising their young daughter. That makes it harder to take the graceless way the plot resolves his meditation on the miraculous. It’s a fatal shortcut to a happy ending. With George Lopez, Morgan Lily and Cheryl Hines. (Bill Stamets)