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THE REAPING
(Review)
Stephen Hopkins’ The Reaping has a number of elements that could have made for an effective horror film: Biblical plagues, a little girl who could be the spawn of Satan, a twist ending. It’s even got a nifty end credits sequence. Oh, and a double Oscar winner. Ultimately though, all these elements don’t really gel into one cohesive, kick-a$$ whole.
Katherine (Hilary Swank, she of the double Best Actress Oscars) is an ex-minister whose faith is shattered by the deaths of her husband and daughter during missionary work in the Sudan, and now spends her days as a professional debunker of miraculous phenomena.
She is first contacted by Father Michael Costigan (a severely underutilized Stephen Rea), who believes he is being sent warnings by God regarding Katherine’s safety. No sooner has she scoffed at and rebuffed him, that an emissary from Haven (“the best kept secret in the Bible Belt”), Science and Math teacher Doug (David Morrissey, Basic Instinct 2) arrives to ask for her help. It seems that Haven’s river has turned into blood, an event the townspeople fear is the first of ten plagues, plagues caused by the purportedly diabolical presence of Loren McConnell (AnnaSophia Robb, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Bridge to Terabithia); the little girl allegedly killed her older brother at the river’s edge, the heinous crime that caused the water’s transfiguration.
And true enough, Katherine and her assistant Ben (Idris Elba, HBO’s The Wire and 28 Weeks Later) arrive in Haven just in time for the rest of the plagues to come a’knocking. Is Loren truly the evil presence the townsfolk of Haven claim she is, or is there some deeper, darker malevolence at work?
From a screenplay by Chad and Carey W. Hayes—off a story by Brian Rousso—director Hopkins (whose second feature film was 1989’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, but has more recently given us the original Traffic mini-series, as well as being instrumental in 24’s astounding success) delivers a horror film that certainly has moments (particularly when the plagues are concerned), but ultimately fails in delivering the goods.
The script itself is an inconsistent affair, stretches of it actually well-paced, but sadly (heh) plagued by bothersome interludes—the Father Costigan sequences seem to be nothing more than the build-up to the convenient expository sequence that could tell us exactly what’s going on, and which culminates in a tragedy that displays the awesome power of the tale’s evil, thus apparently reinforcing said exposition—and revelations that are pulled out of thin air with the flourish of a Las Vegas magician (or a stricken priest who’s boned up on his religious texts offscreen).
That, coupled with a climactic effects sequence that degenerates into a morass of CGI sound and fury, and you have a film that fails in a most annoying fashion.
Which is too bad, really.
As I said, it had some of the makings of a good horror movie. And cinematographer Peter Levy (a frequent Hopkins collaborator since the director’s debut, Dangerous Game) knows how to get the shot without crossing the line into that MTV-slick territory a lot of Hollywood horror loses itself in these days.
No matter how great the film looks though, the story itself gets a bit clunky, and the heavy-handed attempt at misdirection plays more like a stall to rack up the film’s running time than an actual significant twist in the plot.
The script is also not entirely successful in exploring the theme of faith lost and how that can change a person. Yes, we see how it affected Katherine, but we don’t really feel its effect on certain other characters in the story in any potent sense. There’s some talk to that end, but no honest emotion to back it up and give it any weight.
Parallels between characters and situations also aren’t delineated well enough for a proper appreciation of the tale’s layers, leaving the film in an embarrassing lurch; it’s the kind of movie that gives the impression of a flimsy façade when there’s actually something going on within its structure, mostly left unseen by muddled storytelling.
Ultimately, this one is a sad disappointment, as I’d hoped this could be a solid exercise in horror that had nothing to do with either gorno or the Asian horror scene (two predominant trends in Hollywood horror du jour).
Instead, it’s a hit-and-miss affair (largely a miss) that ends up a right bloody mess, like a locust on the sturdy windshield of a horror fan’s fervent expectation.
(The Reaping OS’s courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; note the original 2006 release date on the first OS.)
(Review)
Stephen Hopkins’ The Reaping has a number of elements that could have made for an effective horror film: Biblical plagues, a little girl who could be the spawn of Satan, a twist ending. It’s even got a nifty end credits sequence. Oh, and a double Oscar winner. Ultimately though, all these elements don’t really gel into one cohesive, kick-a$$ whole.
Katherine (Hilary Swank, she of the double Best Actress Oscars) is an ex-minister whose faith is shattered by the deaths of her husband and daughter during missionary work in the Sudan, and now spends her days as a professional debunker of miraculous phenomena.
She is first contacted by Father Michael Costigan (a severely underutilized Stephen Rea), who believes he is being sent warnings by God regarding Katherine’s safety. No sooner has she scoffed at and rebuffed him, that an emissary from Haven (“the best kept secret in the Bible Belt”), Science and Math teacher Doug (David Morrissey, Basic Instinct 2) arrives to ask for her help. It seems that Haven’s river has turned into blood, an event the townspeople fear is the first of ten plagues, plagues caused by the purportedly diabolical presence of Loren McConnell (AnnaSophia Robb, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Bridge to Terabithia); the little girl allegedly killed her older brother at the river’s edge, the heinous crime that caused the water’s transfiguration.
And true enough, Katherine and her assistant Ben (Idris Elba, HBO’s The Wire and 28 Weeks Later) arrive in Haven just in time for the rest of the plagues to come a’knocking. Is Loren truly the evil presence the townsfolk of Haven claim she is, or is there some deeper, darker malevolence at work?
From a screenplay by Chad and Carey W. Hayes—off a story by Brian Rousso—director Hopkins (whose second feature film was 1989’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, but has more recently given us the original Traffic mini-series, as well as being instrumental in 24’s astounding success) delivers a horror film that certainly has moments (particularly when the plagues are concerned), but ultimately fails in delivering the goods.
The script itself is an inconsistent affair, stretches of it actually well-paced, but sadly (heh) plagued by bothersome interludes—the Father Costigan sequences seem to be nothing more than the build-up to the convenient expository sequence that could tell us exactly what’s going on, and which culminates in a tragedy that displays the awesome power of the tale’s evil, thus apparently reinforcing said exposition—and revelations that are pulled out of thin air with the flourish of a Las Vegas magician (or a stricken priest who’s boned up on his religious texts offscreen).
That, coupled with a climactic effects sequence that degenerates into a morass of CGI sound and fury, and you have a film that fails in a most annoying fashion.
Which is too bad, really.
As I said, it had some of the makings of a good horror movie. And cinematographer Peter Levy (a frequent Hopkins collaborator since the director’s debut, Dangerous Game) knows how to get the shot without crossing the line into that MTV-slick territory a lot of Hollywood horror loses itself in these days.
No matter how great the film looks though, the story itself gets a bit clunky, and the heavy-handed attempt at misdirection plays more like a stall to rack up the film’s running time than an actual significant twist in the plot.
The script is also not entirely successful in exploring the theme of faith lost and how that can change a person. Yes, we see how it affected Katherine, but we don’t really feel its effect on certain other characters in the story in any potent sense. There’s some talk to that end, but no honest emotion to back it up and give it any weight.
Parallels between characters and situations also aren’t delineated well enough for a proper appreciation of the tale’s layers, leaving the film in an embarrassing lurch; it’s the kind of movie that gives the impression of a flimsy façade when there’s actually something going on within its structure, mostly left unseen by muddled storytelling.
Ultimately, this one is a sad disappointment, as I’d hoped this could be a solid exercise in horror that had nothing to do with either gorno or the Asian horror scene (two predominant trends in Hollywood horror du jour).
Instead, it’s a hit-and-miss affair (largely a miss) that ends up a right bloody mess, like a locust on the sturdy windshield of a horror fan’s fervent expectation.
(The Reaping OS’s courtesy of wildaboutmovies.com; note the original 2006 release date on the first OS.)
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