The Reaping

In the beginning Jehovah sent fire down from heaven to zap the baddies. For those young enough to believe in miracles, this was so cool. Later, in the New Testament, water into wine, or the resurrection of some old codger, didn’t have the same Sodom & Gomorrah epic quality.

The Reaping goes back to basics, where plagues of boils and locusts and other hideousities were inflicted upon non believers and the make up department has a field day. At one moment, it’s not raining men, but frogs – dead frogs.

Scary?

Magnolia revisited.

Dr Catherine Winter (Hilary non-Swank) is an ordained investigative academic/action person, who goes about the world disproving miracles by scientific means. Her sidekick and fellow boffin is Ben (Idris Elba), an African-American with gangsta tatts and bullet holes all over his body. Previously, she had been in the Sudan, helping a gloomy priest (Stephen Rea) with his missionary work. After a year’s drought, the local witch doctor sacrificed her husband and daughter to appease God. She has nightmares and flashbacks about Africa throughout the film, confusing an already confused situation.

Doug (David Morrissey) from Haven, Louisiana, persuades her to come to their small community to solve the mystery of a river of blood and the wild girl in the woods, who is supposed to have been responsible, having first murdered her brother. This 12-year-old child (AnnaSophia Robb), daughter of a white trash mother, living in Deep Southern poverty, is thought to be the Antichrist and therefore needs to be dispatched before she turns into Damien from The Omen.

Catherine wanders around looking serious and sexy, achieving nothing and making wrong choices most of the time. The pregnant locals are oddly menacing without actually forcing her into the hollow belly of a giant flammable alligator. There are references to every psychic religious horror movie ever made and when Jehovah enters the fray it’s like the battle scene from The Scorpion King.

Predictable and supremely silly, The Reaping feels like a CGI monster that has eaten its young. Swank always tries her best. If she has a sense of humour, it is cleverly disguised. As for Morrissey (Blackpool, Basic Instinct 2), what is a nice, middle-class lad from Liverpool, married to a Freud, doing here? His accent is dodgy and he plays Doug with unapologetic blandness.

God moves in a mysterious way. Hollywood follows. One cult removed.