TITLE: The Reaping
DIRECTOR: Stephen Hopkins
WRITER: Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes
TAGLINE: Thousands of years ago there was a series of bizarre occurrences that many believed to have been the Ten Biblical Plagues. No one thought they could happen again. Until now.
CAST: Hillary Swank, David Morrisey, Idris Elba, Anna Sophia Robb

I really, really liked Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. Then again, that was a really, really good movie, not just story-wise but in its entirety. I don't particularly like the actress and I don't think I've seen any of her other movies. If I did, I don't remember them at the moment. Anyway, I was just reeling from the utter greatness of Million Dollar Baby, after re-watching it on DVD, so, of course, when my friends decided to watch a movie yesterday, and given my preference for horrific fantasies any time over any other movie genre, we decided to watch The Reaping.



Swank's character, Catherine, is a college professor who also works as a miracle debunker -- that is, she investigates seemingly miraculous incidents in order to give them a more grounded, scientific light. She ultimately gets contacted by a town which has been subjected to a series of strange incidents, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the ten biblical plagues. The whole town seems to blame a mysterious girl as the source of all their troubles. But is she the spawn of Satan? Or merely the scapegoat in a chain of events ultimately more twisted and gruesome than the first?

Gosh.

I was dying for a good horror film, one that is of the same caliber as the runaway hit Dawn of the Dead, but I got Jesus-ed by The Reaping instead.

The movie is pretty bad. It is obvious from the trailer alone that this movie is not going to be anything fast-paced or scream-inducing like how I've come to expect of horror B-movies. Rather, it is the slow kind of creepy, which normally would have gotten to me had I wanted to be creeped out like that yesterday.

Problem is, I wanted a good scream, which I never got from The Reaping. I guess I will just have to compensate myself with scientific mumbo jumbo that could have explained the ten plagues of Egypt (that was actually pretty interesting but Swank sounds like she has a lisp so I never understand half of what she's saying) and also about all sorts of scary stuff happening that turn out to be an "Oops, it was only a dream" cliche (that was just annoying).

From the scientific point of view, the movie was flawless. I liked the beginning, especially. It was the finale that made me cringe. Truly fantastic! Like something out of a movie, which is such a shame. But what really made it so bad were the facts that served as background for Swank's supposedly tragic character (like how her family died in Africa) but which only serve as flimsy connections to the present story. To the viewer, it all seemed unnecessary.

For one, Catherine is supposed to be a scientist, but the movie never firmly establishes that. What it establishes instead is that she is a former faithful who has lost her faith when she lost her family, so now she spends her time, supposedly spent investigating, going around in circles and hallucinating.

I did not like how the story unfolded. Cults always scare me. I mean, the remake of The Wicker Man was bad but I still got creeped out by the occultism. The Reaping is part-occultism, part-mysticism, and part-religious. Ultimately it suffered from its inability to make up its mind.

Labels: drama, horror, supernatural, suspense, thriller