Headscratchers / The Mothman Prophecies

• I know this is a horror movie, and you shouldn't expect them to be logical in a way more realistic movies are, but it seems there are several things that don't make sense even according to the movie's inner logic. Here are some questions that are left unanswered in the film:
  • Why does the Mothman appear to Mary? Is it trying to warn her about her brain tumor? But all the other warnings the Mothman gives are about larger catastrophies where several people will die, so why was this one woman so important?
    • To establish contact with John and "plant the seed" so that two years later it doesn't entirely come out of left field. It's not Mary that's important, it's Connie. It was about John saving Connie. Perhaps it was about saving both of them. She saves him by encouraging him to let go of Mary and joining her and her family for Christmas and John saves her by being at the right place and time in a vehicle that he could locate underwater (Connie being inside a patrol vehicle with a still-working light bar saved her).
  • Why does Gordon think John has rung his doorbell for three nights in a row, even though John doesn't remember any of it? Was the Mothman posing as John? If so, why?
    • Perhaps whatever event caused John in his A8 to travel 400 miles in 90 minutes caused some kind of time loop that stabilized itself. Whatever it was, it was powerful enough to disorient John and disrupt the car's electrical system—the date on the malfunctioning instrument cluster was off, reading 3.30.2001 when it should've been mid-December—and his cell phone. As he is walking toward Gordon's house, he seems to become disoriented again. Or it was Mr. Cold or the Mothman (or they're same person) saying "this guy is going to show up?"
  • It seems the reason the Mothman is drawn to Point Pleasant is because it can sense the coming catastrophe at the bridge. But why does it also prophesy about other catastrophes in other parts of the world? Were the people involved in those other catastrophes also visited by Mothmen before they died, and did those other Mothmen also tell them about the upcoming accident at Ohio river?
    • The point was to get John Klein's attention and make it clear that the source is real and the information reliable. He/she/they clearly wanted Klein at a certain place and time but it had to be his choice.
  • We find out that the Mothman can speak with a human voice, so what was the point of all those telephone calls with the high-pitched electronic noise?
    • It could be that it relies on generating electrical impulses to create its voice and those high-pitched noises were side-effects of whatever method was being used.
  • Why does Gordon freeze to death? What was he doing outside? Did the Mothman lead him there? If so, why? Previously the Mothman appeared to be friendly with Gordon, why would it want him dead?
    • One possibility is that Gordon was always going to die. He could've had some undiagnosed disorder or was just sleep walking. It was the same with Mary. It could be that Mary would've had a seizure in the car from the previously undiagnosed tumor and that the was the point that Mothman choose to initiate contact. Why? To get John's attention and to make sure two years later that he'd remember.
  • Is the woman who Connie saw the real Mary, or the Mothman posing as Mary? If it's the latter, why did the Mothman do this?
    • It was the Mothman posing as Mary based on the theory that its intention was to push John to make the choice of letting go of his dead wife and moving on or refusing to let go and losing everything he had.
  • Why does the Mothman first warn John about the Silver Bridge accident, then try to get him away from Point Pleasant by claiming Mary would call him? If we accept Connie's dream as a vision from the Mothman, then there was only ever going to be 37 victims in the accident, meaning that John wasn't going to die in it. Why, then, does the Mothman try to lure him away from Point Pleasant when the accident was about to happen?
    • Because it wasn't about preventing the disaster, it was about John choosing to let go of Mary and accepting Connie's invitation or taking that phone call and missing the bridge disaster resulting in Connie's death and John possibly being driven to suicide. Keel losing his career and family and Gordon losing his job, wife and then dying are examples of what's in store for John if he makes the wrong choice.
  • The accident happens when cars are stuck at the bridge due to some odd malfunction in the traffic lights. It's also said the cause of the bridge's collapse is unknown. All this hints that the Mothman was actually behind the accident. But if it was, why was it also trying to warn people about it?
    • Preventing the disaster was likely not in the cards. It had to happen and would always happen like the plane crash and the earthquake. In the real-life bridge collapse, the cause was metal fatigue and the bridge not being built with the possibility of increased vehicle traffic decades later. As to the traffic lights, it may have been a hardware failure that couldn't be fixed quickly. It was Christmas Eve and the person with the access and ability to fix it was either en route or couldn't be contacted. By the time law enforcement began to respond, it was too late. The bridge collapse was a perfect storm of circumstances. An old bridge that not designed to handle modern traffic, a traffic light system that failed at the worst time that led to gridlock, and the weight of all those cars and trucks straining decades-old materials to the breaking point. More likely, the Mothman is making small but significant changes that have much longer-term effects.

    • All of the above being left unexplained is the central theme of the movie. You can't understand the creature's origins, motivations or even its basic nature, and if you pursue these questions, you're basically driving yourself to obsession and eventual insanity without anything to gain from it.
    • Imagine a creature further advanced than you are you are to a cockroach. Imagine trying to communicate with the cockroach. As stated, the entity was intrigued by people who noticed it, but its ability to communicate with us is fractured, at best.
    • I don't know, the entity seemed to conduct itself pretty well in that phone call. If it can understand what Chapstick is, then it really isn't than incomprehensible to us.
    • There be no entity at all, of course. As Leek mentions, these visions and experiences might be the equivalent to hair being raised just before a lightning strike.
    • There is a much clearer thing that the questioner is missing... he's assuming that the exact same entity is behind all of the things listed. We don't know for a fact that this is the case. It may be that there are multiple entities working at cross-purposes, and you can't ever rule out the possibility of the human beings involved just doing things of their own accord (the guy who froze to death, for example, may have had a stroke or something and his death could be completely unconnected).

• There is yet another possibility of Mothman being an AI or human from another time period sending electrical impulses back through time and space to communicate and change certain events.
  • It's just as possible that Mary and the others who saw the Mothman who died were always supposed to die and they were simply the safest means to contact/influence John and Connie (direct contact might cause brain damage) and convince them that he/she/they are real and the information reliable if cryptic. Whether those changes are for better or worse remains unknown, but at the end of the film a respected journalist and a trusted law enforcement official ultimately survived. Two people who have a great deal of trust and influence. A police officer that you feel comfortable approaching and talking to is an incredibly valuable resource to a community. As is an honest political journalist. What they ultimately do later in life could be as simple as listening to somebody or publishing an article that inspires someone to get into politics.
  • The cryptic "36, wake up number 37" was likely the best outcome of an event that the Fire Chief characterized as being far worse otherwise. If John hadn't been there, more people could've died by not being warned sooner or helped out of their vehicles and Connie would've died from drowning or hypothermia.
  • It could be that the Mothman's ultimate aim was to give John a choice: let go of your wife and move on or lose what you still have or have gained. Gordon didn't let go and he lost his job, his wife left him and then he died. The same thing was going to happen to John if he had stayed and answered that phone. Inevitably, he would've found out about the bridge collapse and Connie's death, and realized what the message meant. After that, it would've been very possible that, out of grief for losing yet another friend, realizing that he could've been there stop it, he would've killed himself.
  • If time travel is involved, it would explain how John got a call from Gordon an hour before finding him despite being dead hours earlier. As well as explaining how Gordon called John about Cold and put him on the phone but was actually in bed when Connie showed up. The phone conversations were connected at different points in time. That might have been the case with Mary if John had answered the phone. Maybe that was her calling from her hospital bed prior to her death.
    • It may also explain how Gordon wandered outside and ended up dying from exposure. He was disoriented. It would also explain how John had knocked on his door asking for help for two nights in a row: John was stuck in a repeating loop that stabilized. During the road trip scene and while walking toward Gordon's house, we see him get briefly disoriented twice.
    • On the other hand, the phone calls of people who sound like John and Gordon may have been mimicked. In the world of 2022 we have deepfakes of people that look and sound real but are slightly off. That kind of technology didn't exist and would be the stuff of science fiction in 2002.

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