The Reaping
(2006)
review by Head Cheeze

No one goes into a Dark Castle flick expecting to walk away feeling as though they’ve seen something groundbreaking or even remotely intelligent; I mean, hell, the company’s initial offerings were bloody, supercharged versions of B-movie horror schlock, and it’s never seemed as though they were intent on serving up anything more than those same sorts of guilty pleasures with an extra side of cheese. With the end-of-days thriller, The Reaping, the studio manages to lure in yet another Academy Award winning actress (after Halle Berry in Gothika) in Hilary Swank to class up the advertising campaign, but how does her presence impact the film, itself?

Swank plays Katherine, a former missionary turned professional debunker of religious phenomena, who is called to a small Louisiana town to investigate a river that has mysteriously turned to blood after the death of a young boy. The ultra devout locals blame the event on Loren (Robb), the daughter of a shunned family whom they believe is some sort of harbinger of the devil. Katherine, meanwhile, has seen the bloody water trick a dozen times, and is certain she’ll disprove this latest case by dinner time, but when the river water is tested and proven to be human blood, she’s not quite sure what to believe. What follows are essentially the Ten Biblical Plagues as interpreted by Dan Brown with an IMAC and a pirate copy of 3D Studio Max, as the cardboard denizens of this backwater town are assaulted by a flurry of CGI bugs, buckets of blood, and a hearty dose of poorly researched theological hokum.

The Reaping is one of those films that you’ll probably start to forget the moment you step out of the theater, but it’s not nearly as bad a film as Warner Bros. whack-a-mole release date strategy would have you believe. Originally slated for a mid-2006 bow, The Reaping went back to the editing room for tweaks, missed two more release dates in November and January, before finally being thrown to the wolves, opening on the same weekend as the highly anticipated Grindhouse. Truth-be-told, I was actually surprised by how much I actually liked this film seeing as how movies that are held back as long as The Reaping was are traditionally done so for a reason. While this flick is far from a classic, it’s not much worse than any of the other Dark Castle offerings, so I’m not quite getting the lack of love on the WB’s part. I mean, it’s not that good, but it certainly ain’t that bad.

Buoyed by the always likeable (and really quite hot in an awkward, barnyard animal sort of way) Swank, a solid supporting cast that features Dark Castle alumn, Stephen Rea, as well as The Wire's Idris Elba, The Reaping is a harmless and moderately entertaining diversion that will probably do much better on DVD than in theaters, and I’m guessing that we probably won’t have to wait very long to tell.