The Reaping Review
by [email protected] (dnb AT dca DOT net)April 17th, 2007
THE REAPING
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2007 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
In "The Reaping," Hilary Swank plays a blonde LSU miracle quasher assigned to the bayou town of Haven, Louisiana when a young boy is killed and (for starters) its rivers turn blood red.
Swank's Katherine Winter is a university scientist/lecturer who, to date, has investigated 48 religious miracles and found a rational, scientific explanation for each and every one of them. "Until now..."
A Haven law enforcement official (David Morrissey) tracks Katherine down and piques her interest when he claims that the townsfolk mostly believe that a young girl (played by AnnaSophia Robb), a social outcast, is responsible for the phenomenon. Katherine recently lost her young daughter and husband in a bizarre sacrificial killing in the Sudan so she takes a personal interest in the case. That's about the time an old friend, Father Costigan (Stephen Rea, shades of "The Exorcist"), telephones Katherine and tells her that all of his photographs of her have spontaneously combusted before his very eyes and that when he arranges the pictures just so, the burn marks form an inverted sickle (not a good omen as far as prophetic symbols go).
Katherine and her hunky assistant Ben (Idris Elba) therefore show up in Haven and start taking samples--swamp water, dead fish, vegetation--and overnighting them back to Louisiana State for some timely testing. Then frogs fall from the sky. Then flies spoil a good barbeque. Then cattle keel over and die. The occurrences appear to be taking on biblical proportions but Katherine isn't buying any of it. Not yet. "You want to talk biblical?" she counters when Ben feels things have moved way beyond coincidental. She then delivers a nicely crafted speech that makes sense out of all those nasty plagues God sent the Pharaoh as an incentive for letting his people go--locusts, boils, fire and brimstone, etc.
They're all here in "The Reaping" for Ms. Swank's character to chew over, and chew over again.
Stephen Hopkins's film is a non-taxing horror yarn that makes hardly any sense. Its characters do silly, illogical things pretty much all the time. It succumbs to cheap shock tactics and easy scares. And it provides the latest example of (to quote from my review of last year's ill-advised remake of "The Wicker Man") "yet another diminutive red-cloaked figure unwisely pursued." Movie protagonists should have learned long before now that if the object of their pursuit is under four feet six and clad in crimson then they should watch their hapless backs.
You can't knock Swank in any of this, of course. While not exactly giving a tour de force performance she's smart and supremely sexy (that might be a judgment call of course). Katherine only withers a little on the vine when her host (Morrissey) starts coming on to her, subtle-like, around the time she learns he lost his antebellum wife of seven years to cancer. Otherwise it's all bumps in the night and loss of power at inopportune moments and don't go in the basements and dust storm flashbacks and a lot of easy copouts. The drama, what there is, is really watching the special effects team pull together their what-hath-God-wrought plagues one after the other.
Like a dozen crawfish broiled and served Cajun style said afflictions are certainly appetizing enough but just a tad difficult to digest.
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David N. Butterworth
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
