The Reaping Review
Posted by James McGee on 04.09.2007
Plague by numbers.
Hilary Swank—Katherine Winter
Idris Elba—Ben
David Morrissey—Doug
Anna Sophia Robb—Loren McConnell
Stephen Rea—Father Costigan
Directed by Stephen Hopkins
Screenplay by Carey Hayes & Chad Hayes; Story by Brian Rousso
Runtime: 96 minutes
Rated R for violence, disturbing images and some sexuality
Greetings, and welcome to my inaugural review for 411mania.com. I want to thank Ashish and Leonard Hayhurst for giving me this opportunity. I’m just glad to be here.
There’s nothing wrong with being average—let me say that right off the bat. My life is a constant struggle to achieve mediocrity, because as long as you’re not too great or not too awful, people tend to not notice you at all. I like it that way, so I can appreciate others with a similar work ethic. But while I can still make a decent living right here in the middle of the road, it’s hard out there for an average movie. I can’t exactly fault The Reaping for its lack of ambition; I just hope it doesn’t expect anyone to remember such a thoroughly average flick.
So you think that image of the Virgin Mary in your toast is a sign from God? Well, Katherine Winter will swoop down and slather a heaping helping of science all over your faith and prove you wrong! She’s a UCLA professor who gets her jollies from traveling around the world debunking miraculous occurrences. Though she was once an ordained minister herself, Katherine’s faith was shattered during a horrific event that led to the death of her family, sending her on a vindictive quest to disprove anything with even a hint of Divine influence about it. After forty-eight investigations (and forty-eight scientific explanations), she’s called to Haven, Louisiana, which seems to be suffering through the ten plagues of Exodus. The townsfolk seem to think it is God’s wrath directed at the McConnell family—specifically the youngest daughter, Loren, whose brother inexplicably dropped dead in her presence. As Katherine wades through rivers of blood and showers of frogs, painful memories come back to haunt her, and when her new-found faith in science begins to fail, she’s forced to entertain other, less mundane, explanations.
If you’re an aficionado of horror films, much of The Reaping will seem familiar to you. There’s a bit of The Exorcist, a little Stigmata, a smidgeon of The Omen —pretty much, if it’s a religious-themed horror film, it’ll find its way into The Reaping sooner or later. All of your stock characters are accounted for. Katherine is the typical once-devout-now-skeptic, her partner Ben is a former gang-banger who found God and turned his life around, Father Costigan is Katherine’s former mentor who believes he is receiving warning signs that she is in danger, the McConnells are the outcast family up to all manner of “abominations” out in the swamp…so on and so forth.
What The Reaping fails to borrow from all of its predecessors is the edge and controversy. Religion is always touchy subject matter in films, but this movie deals with all of its themes in typical horror movie fashion. It throws a few gross/disturbing images at you, a string of “boo!” jump-scares, and the odd creepy moment, but there’s no bite to the fright here. Similarly, the juicy possibilities of Katherine’s history and how it affects her current occupation are just glossed over. Here is a woman who has essentially tasked herself with disproving the existence of God—that’s pretty heavy stuff, and a lot more could have been teased out concerning her motivations (my dime-store psychological analysis tells me she does believe in a Higher Power, and is on a vindictive quest against Him for what He “allowed” to happen to her family.) Instead, we get a few flashbacks and one-line explanations so that the business of by-the-numbers horror can continue. Everything unfolds as you would expect it to, and while no fewer than three last-minute twists might keep you guessing, once it’s all over, I doubt you’ll be very surprised at how things turn out.
If you’ve read about my Purpose Driven Philosophy over in 411Games (and if not, feel free to do so by clicking here), you know that I don’t think clichés are necessarily bad, or that movies have to break new ground to be worthwhile. The Reaping is a pretty standard horror film, but it never gets boring, and left me entertained. At the same time, it’s all been done (better) before, so this movie just becomes something for Hilary Swank to do between Oscar nominations.
The 411: Hilary Swank doesn’t quite “Halle Berry” her Oscar cred here (she has two little gold statues now, so I’d say she’s pretty safe), but still doesn’t seem very interested to be here. Considering The Reaping sows leftover seeds from a long history of horror films and harvests a thoroughly mediocre movie as a result, I can’t say I blame her.
