The Reaping: Movie Review (2007) by Christopher Smith

If Hilary Swank weren’t dating her agent, which she is, some might advise her to kick him to the curb, which she should. And perhaps someone still might, particularly after seeing the two-time Academy Award-winning actress stumble and slum through the moronic new horror thriller, "The Reaping."

What was she thinking?

Between the film’s fainting cows (hilarious!), its lice-ridden children (bilious!) and its skies that rain frogs (amphibious!), the big draw here — according to Warner’s marketing campaign — are the computer-generated locusts, which pull an "Exorcist II" on audiences by swarming the screen in flocks of undulating evil. There isn’t a can of Raid big enough to kill these beasts, so one might instead consider turning that can on the movie itself.

From Stephen Hopkins, the film stars Swank as Katherine Winter, a former missionary minister who was so undone by a personal crisis in the Sudan that she ditched her relationship with God in favor of using science to explain away alleged miraculous events. Essentially, she’s a biblical buzz kill.

Now a Louisiana State University professor, Katherine, along with her fellow researcher Ben (Idris Elba), are called upon by Doug Blackwell (David Morrissey) to descend upon Haven, a Louisiana backwater in which the stereotypes run high and the rivers have turned red with blood in the wake a little boy’s murder.

The presumed murderer is the boy’s sister, Loren (AnnaSophia Robb), whose eyes are the size of saucers and who seems fixed in a trance. The townspeople are convinced her act of evil has brought about the 10 biblical plagues, which the film ticks off one by one, with Katherine eventually running out of ways to explain them away. Dampening her spirits is her good friend Father Costigan (Stephen Rea, another fine actor wasted), who believes that Katherine is in grave danger. It takes a mother lode of boils, flies and the appearance of all those locusts to convince her that he might be right.

The trouble with "The Reaping" goes beyond its canned jolts of horror, its lack of logic and coherence, and its one-note performances. By intentionally recalling such superior horror films as "The Omen" and "The Exorcist," it sets itself up for failure if it doesn’t match their excellence.

That it doesn’t won’t surprise many. Long before the movie hit theaters, advance word on the film was about as good as the mood at the Imus household, and then it got worse — and then somehow worse. Those who pay attention to movies — and to the Web sites devoted to following them from conception to completion — knew that for more than a year, a possible train wreck was headed toward theaters.

Those who felt a tremor when the film opened now have their point of reference.

Grade: D