Dragonfly (2002 film)

Dragonfly is a 2002 supernatural thriller film directed by Tom Shadyac from a screenplay by Brandon Camp, Mike Thompson, and David Seltzer based on a story by Camp and Thompson. It was produced by Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Mark Johnson, and Shadyac. It stars Kevin Costner as a grieving doctor being contacted by his dead wife through his patients' near-death experiences. It was panned by critics and a box office failure, grossing $52.3 million against its $60 million production budget.

Plot
Joe and Emily Darrow are doctors in a Chicago hospital. Seven months pregnant Emily travels to Venezuela to help natives in the Amazon area. She dies when a bus is hit by a landslide and plunges into the river below. Her body is never found by the authorities.

Without taking time to grieve, Joe returns to work. One night, he is awakened by Emily's dragonfly paper weight that falls and rolls across the room. Emily always had a passion for dragonflies and even had a birthmark on her shoulder which resembled a dragonfly. At the pediatric oncology unit, Joe starts visiting Emily's patients. One of them is brought in unconscious. Joe hears the child calling his name. The staff try to revive him without success - his heart flatlines. Joe then approaches the child, whose heart begins beating again.

The following afternoon, Joe returns to the child who asks if he is "Emily's Joe" and says she sent him back to tell Joe something. In the room there are drawings of a curvy cross, but the boy does not know what it means. During his near death experience, the boy saw a light, and a woman showing an image of Joe; the cross symbol was what he saw at the end of the rainbow. Later, while passing by another child's room, Joe sees the same drawing. That boy knows who Joe is and says that he must "go to the rainbow".

When Joe arrives at his home, his parrot goes into a rage, breaking a pot and making the symbol drawn in the spilled soil on the floor. Joe spots a dragonfly flying outside the window, and briefly sees Emily reaching for him. Joe's neighbour tries to talk him back into reality. Instead, he goes to Sister Madeline, a controversial nun who investigated near-death experiences. She thinks that Emily is indeed trying to contact Joe from the other side.

Later, at the hospital, Joe is alone with a clinically dead patient. Joe then hears Emily speaking through the patient, calling his name, but no one believes him. He decides to sell his home and go on vacation. While packing away Emily's belongings, the lightbulb in the room burns out. When he returns with a new bulb, all the belongings he had packed away are back in their original places. He enters his kitchen where a map has blown open, showing the symbol at several places. He learns from a friend that the cross is the map symbol for a waterfall. Joe remembers a photo of Emily posing in front of a waterfall with a rainbow behind her.

He takes a trip to the area where she died. Joe's pilot, Victor, takes him to the victims' graves near a tribe village. Joe shows the photo and asks his native guides if they know where Emily is buried. They start arguing with each other that he should be brought to the village. Joe's attention then shifts to the village, and he runs off to it. He comes to a cliff and sees the bus down below in the water. Joe jumps into the river and enters the semi-flooded bus, causing it to shift and become completely submerged. Trapped inside, Joe sees a glow fill the bus, and then Emily appears, reaching for his hand. The events of her final hours flash before him, showing she survived the accident and was pulled to safety by nearby Yanomami villagers. Joe is then rescued by Victor.

Joe runs to the village and is surrounded by native men with weapons. He holds up a photo of Emily. A native tells him they could not save Emily's body but they saved her soul. Perplexed, he follows the native woman into a hut, and inside is a girl in a basket, the child Emily was carrying, who survived the accident. There is a birthmark on the child in the shape of a dragonfly. As he embraces his daughter he realizes what Emily was trying to tell him.

Some time later, Joe plays with his daughter, now a toddler with wavy blonde hair, the very image of Emily.

Cast

 * Kevin Costner as Dr. Joe Darrow
 * Susanna Thompson as Dr. Emily Darrow
 * Joe Morton as Hugh Campbell
 * Ron Rifkin as Charlie Dickinson
 * Kathy Bates as Miriam Belmont
 * Linda Hunt as Sister Madeline
 * Jacob Vargas as Victor
 * Robert Bailey, Jr. as Jeffrey Reardon
 * Jay Thomas as Hal
 * Matt Craven as Eric
 * Lisa Banes as Flora
 * Casey Biggs as Neil Darrow
 * Leslie Hope as Charisse Darrow
 * Peter Hansen as Phillip Darrow

Production
The project was initially set up at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) when the script was bought for a mid six figures outbidding Touchstone. The script was put into turnaround when MGM grew uncertain of the $75 million dollar budget with Shady Acres Entertainment reacquiring the domestic distribution rights that in turn were acquired by Universal, while Spyglass Entertainment handled foreign pre-sales in a manner similar to the arrangement with The Sixth Sense whose success helped give Dragonfly the traction it needed to move into production. Kevin Costner entered negotiations to star in September 2000.

Release
Produced on a $60 million budget, Dragonfly made $52 million worldwide.

Home media
The film was released on DVD on 30 July 2002 by Universal Studios Home Video.

Reception
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 7% of 125 critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 3.65/10. The consensus reads: "Sappy, dull and muddled, Dragonfly is too melancholic and cliched to generate much suspense." On Metacritic it carries the score of 25 out of 100, indicating "Generally unfavorable reviews".

Remake
An Indian remake was made of this film by the name Saaya in 2003.