Bless The Child: Critic Reviews

Isn't genuinely scary enough to suppress the inevitable urge to laugh at its cheesy inconsistencies, but isn't howlingly funny enough to raise it to the level of genius.

The scariest thing about this hokey bombast is that it got made in the first place.

The deflatingly ordinary Bless the Child causes one to wish ... that movies about the supernatural could make contact with supernatural script doctors.

Director Chuck Russell ... plays this like high drama, preventing all the potential camp humor and cheap thrills from bursting forth. And the film drags.

Horrendous dialogue and horrific directing dominate this thriller, in which Coleman's performance shines by default.

The unintentional effect of movies like Bless the Child is that they are enough to make agnostics out of true believers.

For my money, Bless the Child is a much funnier parody of a thriller than Scary Movie -- it just doesn't realize it.

It reps another disappointing outing from Kim Basinger, who's clearly uninspired by the hack material.

After a slow start, it becomes enjoyably creepy, only to decline sharply into a morass of ever more inane ridiculousness.

This hopelessly cliched horror flick touches all the usual bases without much style or imagination.

It makes the battle between good and evil look trite, familiar, and boring.

Must the makers of Bless the Child bang us over the head with symbolism?

Winning an Oscar has changed Kim Basinger, and not in a good way.

The special effects are impressive, but the dialogue is an unintentional hoot.

Shamelessly silly, Bless The Child notches up the cliches as the daft story meanders towards a suitably hammy conclusion.

The use of child jeopardy as a cheap suspense mechanism is somewhat dubious, but one's unease is slightly mollified by the fact that much of this is far too silly to take seriously.

Mostly derivative junk, but its few novel touches are worth noting.

Any movie where the villain is a combination of Danny Bonaduce and L. Ron Hubbard has at least has one thing going for it.

Watching, I felt that the script wasn't taking full advantage of the genre.

Forgive them, Lord; Russell et al know not what they do.

If this film were just written badly, or just acted badly, it might have some value. But here we have a double negative.

I kept thinking Jay and Silent Bob would pop out and make a Star Wars joke.

This movie is filled with such nonsense.

Maggie O'Connor begins having visions... These demons look like refugees from "Fantasia" and the angels appear to her as sparkling winged cabbages. Perhaps they're on their way to be photographed for some sort of heavenly produce ad.

A better script or stronger direction might have helped, but without either, this one goes to the Devil.