Movie Review: The Reaping

Thousands of years ago there was a series of bizarre occurrences that many believed to have been the Ten Biblical Plagues. No one thought they could happen again... until now. A former Christian missionary (Hillary Swank), who specializes in debunking religious phenomena, is called to a small Louisana town to investigate strange goings-on, which seem to indicate the same pattern as the Biblical events.

I skipped out on this film in it's theatrical run, despite it being from Dark Castle Entertainment (one of my favorite studios), because I thought it looked like it would be goofy and quite possibly stink. I was surprised to find out that it's actually a decent and original horror film. It's pretty multi-layed and complex and I found the subject matter to be very interesting. The effect were a bit cheesy at times and perhaps the movie got a little confusing, but it all made sense in the end.

The critics universally panned this film (it's got a 7% rating at RottenTomatoes.com) but to me that usually means good things. They loved Swank's award winning film Million Dollar Baby, and I thought the fight scenes and some of the cliches in that film were utterly ridiculous personally. It was a good film, but didn't have me falling all over myself to praise it like the film critics did. The same critics quickly jumped on the horror movie cliches in this film oddly enough. Had Clint Eastwood directed this, they'd have all peed themselves with glee. But, back on track, there's some cool Southern gothic and Old Testament stuff in this which I thought was thought provoking to some extent and intriguing enough that I Googled info on the Ten Biblical Plagues when it ended and read about Exodus and scientists thoughts and such.

1. (Exodus 7:14-25) rivers and other water sources turned to blood
2. (Exodus 7:26-8:11) amphibians (commonly believed to be frogs)
3. (Exodus 8:12-15) lice or gnats
4. (Exodus 8:16-28) wild animals
5. (Exodus 9:1-7) disease on livestock
6. (Exodus 9:8-12) unhealable boils
7. (Exodus 9:13-35) hail mixed with fire
8. (Exodus 10:1-20) locusts
9. (Exodus 10:21-29) darkness
10. (Exodus 11:1-12:36) death of the firstborn

Did you know that desert locust can swarm in huge numbers and a one-square-mile swarm can contain up to 200 million locusts? The largest known swarm covered 400 square miles and comprised an estimated 40 billion insects. There I go off subject again! So go Google for youself!

So um... where was I? Oh yeah, this movie was surprisingly sort of cool.

6.5/10